Nine Non-negotiables When Considering A Partnership with Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan [00:00:01]:

It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run— traditional, digital, media buying, web dev, PR, or brand— whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build a Better Agency podcast presented by White Label IQ will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention, and profitability. Bringing his 25+ years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan. Hey everybody, Drew McClellan here from Agency Management Institute, back with another episode of Build a Better Agency. If you’re a regular listener of the podcast, you know that every 5th episode is a solo cast.

So rather than having a great guest, it’s just you and me, and we’re talking typically about one of two things. Either it’s a topic that a lot of agency owners and leaders have been raising with me and Danielle over the last month or 2 months, or it’s something that’s on our mind that we’re talking about that we wanna make sure is on your mind. And so that’s what we’re gonna do today is we’re gonna talk about something that I think is super important that a lot of people have been asking us about lately. And I’ll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute.

But first, I have a couple pieces of business. As you also know, if you’re a regular listener, we give away a free ticket to either the Build a Better Agency Summit or one of our workshops. on every solo cast. And the way you get into the drawing, the way you’re eligible to win that prize, which by the way is worth around $2,000, the way that you are eligible is you go wherever you download this podcast and you leave a rating and review. Then what I need you to do is I need you to take a screenshot of your rating and review and email it to me at [email protected]. And the reason I need you to email it to me, yes, we go and we look and we read them all and we use all of them as part of our planning process to think about how to make the podcast even better for you.

But in most cases, you’re using a username. So, you know, GoOrange72 might tell me who your football team, your college football team preference is, but it doesn’t tell me your name or your agency or your email address. So I don’t have any way to get ahold of you. So take the screenshot, send it to me at [email protected], and you will stay in the pool of eligible winners until you win. As you might imagine, our universe is not so great that we have 3 million people in the drawing.

So odds are pretty good that sooner or later you’re gonna win a ticket to either the summit or a workshop and be able to take advantage of that. So again, uh, Leave a review, take a screenshot, email it to me, and you’re in until you win. That’s awesome. This month’s winner is Abby Carey from Huebner Marketing. So congratulations, Abby. Thank you very much for your kind rating and review. We will reach out to you by email and let you know how you claim your prize.

Okay. All right. The other thing I want to do before we get into the topic for the day is to Say thank you to our friends at White Label IQ. They are the presenting sponsor of this podcast. They are also, and have been for many years, the presenting sponsor of the Build a Better Agency Summit. So they deeply believe in agencies, and the reason that they deeply believe in agencies and why they support us in helping educate you and help you build a better, stronger, more profitable agency is because they were born from an agency.

So imagine an agency who is looking for a web partner. If I remember the situation, because we were working with them at time, they had a client that needed to very quickly spin up like 10 websites and they couldn’t find a partner that could help them do a quality job at a, at a reasonable price to spin up a bunch of websites at once. And so White Label IQ was born out of that need.

So they created a sister company because they figured if they had the need, other agencies had the need. And sure enough, they were right. And today White Label comes alongside agencies to do web dev, design, paid media like PPC. They do AI automations and build out AI products together with their agency partners. They do all kinds of things that are basically the technical arm for their agencies. They’ll pitch business together. They do a lot of things in service of their agency clients.

So if you want to learn more about them, thank them for sponsoring the podcast or reach out to them as a potential partner. Head over to whitelabeliq.com/ami. So again, whitelabeliq.com/ami. All right. Okay. They’re really great partners. And ironically, that is the theme for this solo cast. Many of you have been asking us lately, is it good to have a partner? If I want a partner, how do I find a partner? Some of you are thinking about making some of your employees minority owners, which would make them a partner.

So this episode is really about about thinking about partnership. What does that look like? How do you evaluate whether or not you and someone else would be a good partner match? And how do you proceed down that path? Okay. So it’s interesting. So for all of you, you’ve had a moment. So it’s, you know, later at night, you’ve been working hard. Maybe you’ve just resolved a really complicated client situation. Back in the day, you know, you would’ve been driving home from work and you would’ve, I certainly did this, you know, sitting in the driveway with your engine off, not quite ready to step out of your work head and into your home head because you’ve got something heavy on you.

And so, you know, you’ve been sitting out there or you’re still in your home office, but with the door closed, you’ve been sitting there. Maybe when you walk in the house, I mean, it’s late. Everybody else in the family’s already had dinner. There might be something waiting for you in the microwave. But you can’t quite get yourself to break that plane, to leave the work world and go into your home world, because, you know, the second you walk through that door right now, all of a sudden you stop being the person who has the weight of the world on their shoulders, and you can’t quite make that switch, right?

So, you know, here are some of the things that put us in that place. Your best account person told you that he or she is exploring some conversations with other agencies. Your bookkeeper sends you a projection with a November that says you’re gonna have a hard time making payroll. A client is pushing you on their retainer and says, you know, shouldn’t this be lower now that AI does a lot of this? And of course, at the end of the day, 6 of your very smart and capable employees looked at you all waiting for you to make a decision or to have an answer.

Because that’s how it works. And all of that is exhausting. Being an agency owner is exhausting. It is a lot of weight on your shoulders. So somewhere in that moment where you are kind of stuck between the work world and your home world, and you’re just sitting there and odds are your eyes are closed and you’re feeling the weight of the world, a thought crops up. It’s not a new thought. Maybe it’s been showing up for a couple years and it gets louder every time you are this tired. And the thought is, maybe I need a partner, not an employee, not a consultant, but someone who wakes up at 3:00 AM worried about the exact same things that you worry about, that you believe perhaps accurately that you’re the only one who wakes up and worries about those. Someone whose name is on the line of credit at the bank and someone who you could look at on a Friday and say, You know what?

I want you to help with this. Or you look at each other and you go, well, that was a frigging week, and have them actually know what that means. I get it. As many of you who were at the very first Build a Better Agency Summit know, I had a business partner, so I know what that’s like. I had it in my agency, and then I ran AMI for a while by myself until Danielle joined me as a partner.

So I get it. I have sat Literally and figuratively in that driveway. And before we go any further, I wanna make sure that you understand that wanting a partner, wanting someone to share the load is not a weakness. Ownership is lonely in a way that’s very hard to explain to someone who’s never done it. And wanting a peer, a partner, someone who truly understands the path that you’re on and carries the weight like you do. Is one of the most human things that I see in the agency business. Absolutely. And yet in that moment, that driveway moment, if you will, is where agency owners make one of the biggest, least reversible decisions of their business life. It’s not on a spreadsheet, but it’s, uh, some night when you’re feeling depleted, when you are feeling like you just don’t have any more to give, or you’re just tired of carrying it all by yourself. And then within 90 days, somebody gets promoted into ownership. In some cases, you actually give away your equity, which, you know, I think is a terrible idea, or a buy-in gets accepted, or 2 agencies start talk about merging.

So 90 days of exhaustion and emotion lock you in potentially forever for the rest of your business. The truth is I’ve watched more owners get hurt by the wrong partner than by the wrong client, the wrong hire, or even a recession. A bad client leaves, a bad hire costs you 3 months and some sleep, a recession or a bad downturn costs you some money, but a bad partner owns a piece of the thing that you’ve built and they’re in your bank account. They’re on your lease guarantee, and honestly, they’re in your marriage because, or your relationship, because your spouse or your partner now has a financial partner that they didn’t pick. That can be the best of worlds, or it can be the worst of worlds. And what motivates you to move forward and how you select that person has all the difference in the world.

So here’s the plan. I want to walk you through a framework in 2 layers. Layer 1 is what’s universal. There are 9 things that predict a functional partnership for almost anyone. Think of it as a pass/fail grade. They have to get through this gate before you go to the next layer. All right, next, Layer 2 is the one that no one teaches— the part of a partnership that entirely depends on you, your control needs, your conflict style, your exit horizon, your actual weaknesses for versus the ones that you say out loud or you acknowledge. I will tell you where I land up front so you can argue with me the whole way, but partner fit is about 30% universal in my opinion and 70% you.

So that if they pass the, the first hurdle, that first layer, and they would be a good partner for anyone, unfortunately, that’s where a lot of you stop. They’d be a good partner. They check the boxes and we’ll talk through those boxes. But where you really need to be discerning is, are they going to be a good partner for me? That’s 70%. So by the end, I want you to be able to say one of two things. Either now I know what I’m looking for, or you know what? I should not do this. I am not wired to have a business partner and feel some relief in saying that. Both are wins. Only the third option is a mistake— doing it anyway because you’re tired or because you are flat broke, or because you need an infusion of energy or cash or a skillset, and it’s really not the right thing. We’ll talk about some alternatives to partnership that may be a better choice. That’s what we’re gonna talk about today, these 2 layers and some alternatives.

All right. Before I start talking through the first framework, let me talk about why I think this is coming up for many of you right now. 4 things are happening at once and they’re all kind of squeezing you to think that maybe a partner is a good idea. And by the way, a partner might be a great idea, but it might also be a terrible idea. And who that partner is, the candidates might be a great idea or a terrible idea.

But here’s what’s happening right now, why some of you are feeling this. This urge to partner. So first of all, the math got harder. So Promethean Research tracks digital agency performance across a really wide sample size. Average revenue growth was 5% in 2024 and 0.5% in 2025 against a 5-year average of 12%. So we went from 12% to 5% to 0.5%. Now, I will tell you, if you’re an AMI agency and you’re living by the numbers of 55-25-20, you’re— these numbers are not as pertinent to you because you’re outperforming this large group of agencies.

But average net margin, which has run about 15% since 2015 for this group of people, came in at 13%. So growth is slowing down, profit is shrinking. And they’re tying in this research some of that compression directly to clients expecting cheaper work because they think we can do it better and faster, whether that’s with AI or other tools. Their earlier survey work found headcount down 4%, and that ties with our research as well. Many agencies are smaller than they were before, and turnover has dropped dramatically. It’s down to 23%.

So it used to be, it was much, it was over 50%, but there’s not a lot of jobs out there. So again, as every agency shrinks down, fewer jobs, which means your employees, both good and mediocre, are staying with you longer. So read that as a lived experience rather than just a statistic. So growth is slowing down, profits are shrinking, my team is shrinking, and I’m feeling more pressure.

So you’re growing slower, you’re keeping less of the money, and you’re replacing, even if on a slow year, replacing about a quarter of your people every year, but downsizing to a smaller team. That’s a combination that— and by the way, this is just one of the 4 things we’re going to talk about, but that sounds exhausting, right? You’re working harder, you’re making less, and you’re doing it with less people that you have to keep cycling.

So exhaustion is one of the biggest reasons why agency owners go partner shopping. So we can see why it feels like you’re pushing a boulder up a mountain. Okay, so trend number 2, succession pressure is real. And honestly, it’s mostly unaddressed. I keep saying to you, you should have a plan 10 years before you’re ready to retire. You should start working towards your succession plan. We’re teaching a workshop in December, how to get your agency ready to sell. That’s all mostly about you deciding what path you want to take and start doing the work that you need to do 10 years, 5 years, 3 years before you go to market. And go to market could mean sell to an employee. It could mean sell to another agency. It could be PE-backed. It could be just shutting the door and walking away and calling it, and calling it quits.

But you need to have a plan. So Gallup did some research and they said adults 55 and older own about 52% of all US employer businesses. So roughly about 3 million companies, right? So it’s not just agencies. A lot of, there are a lot of owners north of 50 right now. The Exit Planning Institute says that 53% of owners have no written plan. They have not thought at all about how they’re gonna exit the business. Then US Bank surveyed 1,000 owners of businesses under $25 million.

So that’s gonna be most of you. And 62% said succession felt overwhelming, so they just haven’t gone down that path. And only about a 25% of those people who got surveyed had any idea what their business was worth. So only 1 in 4 has any idea what the business is worth. And a partner starts looking like a succession plan, especially if the partner’s 10 years younger than you. For many of you, that’s a very attractive out, right? I’m gonna merge with another agency. I’m 58, the other owner’s 45. That’s gonna be great. I’m gonna sell them my half in, you know, a few years when I’m done. Makes sense. Someone to buy me out slowly. That’s not wrong necessarily. It might be exactly the right thing, but a partner and a succession plan are 2 very different things, and they’re 2 very different conversations. And a lot of owners lean into the partner thing to avoid the succession planning that they need to do.

All right. So the 3rd trend that’s happening right now that’s getting all of you to think maybe partnership is a good idea is There’s a lot of noise out there about consolidation. So there were thousands and thousands of global media and marketing agencies in 2024 that merged or got consumed by each other, including, you know, about 500 deals in big deals. Like I’m talking Omnicom buying IPG and things like that. All of that was worth like $20 billion in transactions.

So we’re seeing, we’re surrounded by, we’re seeing a lot of succession, a lot of agencies buying agencies. And by the way, every week, probably, you’re getting an email from some firm you’ve never heard of telling you that, boy, that you’re doing something special. They’re watching you and they would like to either merge with you or buy you or whatever that is, roll you up into something else.

So this whole merger conversation is pretty present for most of you. And whether it’s a sale or it’s a merger or it’s a roll-up, It feels like it’s inevitable, and so you start thinking about it more. And the fourth one is probably right now, today in 2026, is the the one that’s putting the most pressure on all of you, and that is that no one really knows with certainty what the agency business model is going to look like in three to five years.

So 95 percent, 95 to 98 percent of agencies are using generative AI today. Right? So we know that that’s changing our business. IAB found that half of agencies are concerned that their clients would bring AI, would use AI to bring work in-house and need them less. We saw that in our own Agency Edge research. We also saw, by the way, that yeah, there are some things that are going to be so commoditized, just like they were with freelancers or nearshore talent. AI’s gonna do the same thing. There’s still many of things that we offer that AI or those other tools can’t reproduce that give us value.

But nonetheless, it all creates uncertainty, and uncertainty makes partnership look like insurance, right? If I don’t know where this thing is going, maybe I want someone else’s brain in it with me. Maybe I want someone else to share the risk, to share the ideation, to share the exploration. So those 4 truths add up to fatigue, worry, an unfunded exit, and a market that feels like it’s moving around you and you’re not sure where it’s going. That’s, that’s all genuine cause for worry and stress. That does not mean the solution to that worry or stress is a partner, right?

So you’re under a lot of pressure. Right? Which I feel and understand, and we talk about every single day. But a partnership is not necessarily going to relieve that pressure. And this is what I worry about. This is why this podcast episode is so important to us at AMI is when you make an ownership decision or a partnership decision inside a pressure system, you’re not choosing, you’re trying to relieve, you’re trying to give yourself some breathing room, some fresh air, some oxygen. To cure you from that fatigue and that worry. And that’s not, that’s not the reason or when to do it.

So I just want to say to you, all of this is the level of relief that you feel as you think about imagining a partnership is a measure of your fatigue, not necessarily a measure of the quality of the candidate. So again, the level of relief that you imagine that you’re gonna feel by taking on a partner is a measure of your fatigue, not necessarily a measure of the quality of the candidate. And you have to be very mindful of that so that you don’t, out of depletion or exhaustion or worry, make a decision that is gonna lock you into something for a very long time. And I have seen a lot of partnerships be incredibly valuable, but I’ve also seen a lot of partnerships implode and cause great damage to the business, the employees, the owners.

All right? So I want you to be mindful of that. Now, there are 3 ways that you might take on a partner. So think of ’em as 3 different doors, door A, door B, and door C. And they look similar from the outside, but they’re completely different animals. And they’re different in what each one solves, what each one costs, and how, if it’s going to fail, each one fails.

So doorway number one is you promote an existing employee into a minority ownership. Hopefully you’re going to charge them for that buy-in, but whether you gift it to them or you sell it to them, they either earn it, they buy in, or you, you just hand it over to them, right? So that’s door number one. So what, what door number one, taking on an employee and making them a minority partner solves is retention and continuity. Somebody who already knows your clients, your team, your systems, they know your quirks. And in many cases, you do this as golden handcuffs because you are afraid you’re gonna lose them.

And so ownership feels like what’s gonna lock them in. It also takes the edge off the loneliness. You have someone else you can talk to because it converts a direct report into something closer to a peer. Here’s what it costs though. Costs way more than you think it’s going to. You are permanently changing a relationship that currently works. Yesterday, that person could complain to you about a client, and today you’re asking them to help you decide whether or not to fire that client. And now you have a shareholder with legal rights, information rights, and an economic interest in your compensation. And the worst part of this is you think it’s golden handcuffs that’s going to get them to stay. I will tell you that over and over and over again, Danielle and I have seen that unless you’re going to give them up to about 20%, a minority ownership of 5%, or a lot of you give like 3 to 5% or maybe even 10%, is not enough to get them to stay if they get a better offer.

So you think you’re solving a problem, but the reality is you’re not. So the failure signal in this door, in this doorway number 1 that I see most often is you give equity to solve a compensation problem, a continuity problem, a loyalty problem. And now what you’ve created is a governance problem. Somebody who wants to be paid more and valued more is now a co-owner who believes that 10%, who feels about 10% responsible, but 100% entitled to having their opinions heard. And followed, or the reverse. They take the shares, nothing changes, and 18 months later you’re paying distributions or dividends to someone who’s still functioning like an employee. I see this fall apart every single day. There’s also a mechanical trap as well.

So under the tax code, when property transfers in connection with services Below fair market value, the spread is treated like a comp— is like compensation income. So sweat equity is a business phrase, but not a tax outcome. So before you give away shares, if you’re going to make that huge mistake, and it’s a— I could do a whole podcast on why that’s a bad idea, but I will say this, anybody will take something for free. You want somebody to have to write you a check. You want to know they want to be your business partner, good, bad, and ugly. And that starts with them being willing to pay for the privilege of being your business partner.

But if you’re going to give them shares because of sweat equity, make sure you talk to their— your tax accountant and theirs, because sweat equity is a business phrase, not a tax outcome. So make sure you talk to your CPA. All right. Doorway number 2, an outside partner buys in. So we’ve had agencies where someone has approached them. Maybe they just sold their business or they’re looking for a new opportunity. And they wanna buy into your business, right?

So they’re gonna buy in with either cash or maybe a phased purchase over time, or maybe you’re gonna hold a seller note. What this doorway solves when someone walks through it is it gives you sometimes a capability that you didn’t have because they have a skillset that you need inside your agency and maybe a little bit of capital that your agency needs. So let’s say you are a creative and you need somebody who can actually Go out and sell, or maybe you need a CFO and maybe you need money on the balance sheet, or maybe you need a senior person in a room when you pitch a $2 million client. Lots of different needs can get solved by someone buying into the business. Can also give you a little bit of liquidity when everything you own is tied up in the business. That feels pretty good too, although in most cases it is a phased payment. Or a note, so you don’t get as much. Most people aren’t walking in and handing you a million dollars or a quarter of a million dollars. It’s going to be a longer payout, and so that doesn’t work as well as you think it’s going to.

Here’s what it costs: you are trading known dysfunctions for unknown dysfunction. You don’t know this person. You know exactly how your agency is broken, but you have no idea how this person is going to behave in month fourteen. When the pipeline goes quiet and all of a sudden you’re asking for all the owners to write a check to cover payroll. You don’t know how that’s gonna play out.

So the failure signal here with this kind of a, with this kind of a partnership is that the honeymoon lasts exactly as long as things are going great. Again, the honeymoon lasts for just exactly as long as things are going good. The first bad quarter is the real first meeting. And because you never made the hard call together, if you’ve never fired anyone together, you have no idea or evidence of how this person handles pressure, how this person handles fear, how this person handles making hard decisions. That’s a lot of missing data, not skill, but how do they handle their own fear, their own pressure? Their own ability to have complicated and difficult conversations and to make hard choices.

All right, then there’s doorway number 3. So this is when 2 agencies come together. So think of it as a merger of equals or near equals. What it solves is it solves scale sometimes, it solves capability sometimes. A lot of times a PR firm will join with an SEO firm, or like 2 different skill sets. It can solve coverage issues, right? And maybe sometimes it’s helping you with survival.

So 2 30-person agencies with complementary strengths can really become something that neither can quickly become alone. There’s nothing— that is truth. But there are costs. Everything is negotiable and nothing is settled. So you’ve got 2 cultures, 2 client bases, 2 leadership teams, 2 spouses or partners of those owners, assuming that each agency only has one owner, and 2 people who have each had the final word for probably 10, 15, 20 years and are now supposed to kind of share the microphone. This causes great chaos. Can it work? Absolutely. Does it have to be carefully, carefully orchestrated? Absolutely.

Because otherwise what you end up with is 2 cultures, 2 client bases, 2 leadership teams, 2 spouses, and 2 people who are in essence still running individual agencies, and you haven’t brought them together in a way that actually benefits both shops. So the failure signal is that you have merged the balance sheet, but you’ve never merged anything else. You haven’t merged decision rights. You haven’t restructured the team into one team.

So Bain did a survey and they report that 83% of executives who lived through a failed acquisition named integration as the primary problem. So again, 83% who had a failed merger said that we didn’t integrate properly. That was why we failed. And nearly half said cultural fit or trouble integrating specifically management teams. I can do a, I can and I should do a whole podcast on how to bring cultures together. We don’t have time for that today, but being thoughtful about that is gonna be mission critical if this is how you decide to take on a partner. You’ll also hear, of course, doomsday statistics like 70 to 90% of mergers fail. That was a Harvard Business Review figure, right? And that was broad and general, not just agencies. Right? And they didn’t quite define what fail meant.

So take all of that with a grain of salt. Don’t treat it like it’s your odds, but we should treat it like a warning about how easy it is to get mergers wrong. That’s an important task for us. So here’s the part that most agency owners skip: 3 doorways, right? And you’ve got 3 options. So I’m going to elevate an employee to a minority partner. I’m going to let someone buy into my agency, or I’m going to merge my agency with another agency.

But the threshold of whether or not this is a good idea is the same 9 things. So remember I told you 30% of a partnership combination is universal, and there are 9 factors you need to take into account. And I believe 70% is all based on you. Are you the right partner? Are they the right partner for you? What differs is how much time you get to test and what you’re actually buying.

So in doorway 1, that elevation of the employee, what you’re buying is continuity and some security that that key employee isn’t gonna leave. Doorway 2, normally what you’re buying is capability. Someone’s buying into the business. Maybe you’re getting a little bit of cash, but mostly what you’re buying is hopefully they have a different skillset than you already have in the agency. And in doorway 3, when you’re merging 2 agencies, what you’re buying is scale. You immediately double in size, which you cannot do On your own, if you can’t say which one in a single sentence out loud, then you’re not ready to evaluate anyone. You have to think about if you’re going to take on a partner, which one of these needs are you trying to solve? Right? And did you hear I did not say succession in any of them because that’s a whole different consideration set.

All right. So want to talk a little bit about some of the proof points around this. So there are three comfortable myths. The first one is that I want you to understand that a lot of this data that I’m going to talk about is not specifically about agency partnerships. It’s about partnerships. There has not actually been a really good national study on partnerships, which gives me some ideas of where we need to take the agency edge potentially about what makes a good partnership.

So no one tracks how often agency partnerships dissolve. They do track how partnerships dissolve. No one has published a post-merger client attrition for 30-person shops, for example. I can tell you anecdotally what we’ve seen. I can tell you that when 2, for example, when 2 agencies merge, they can assume, or when one agency buys another agency, they can assume about a third of their employees will leave and about a third of the clients will leave. We’ve seen that over and over, and I’ve certainly seen bigger numbers than that.

But that’s, that’s a reasonable assumption to make. But what we have found is solid research on founding teams, shared leadership, and team conflict. So I’m gonna translate this into agency, and I will tell you where I’m translating the research, but I wanted to give you some data. So as we look at this, as we look at this data, I want to look at 3 myths. So the first myth is we’ve worked together for 10 years, so of course we’re gonna be great business partners. Working together is one thing. Being business partners and making decisions together is a whole thing. Half of that statement is right, and the right half matters.

So there was a study done by Marks and Wasserman that studied stability in founding teams. And what they said was for every additional social tie, someone you know as a friend, but you’ve never worked with, was associated with roughly a 29% higher hazard So a lot of times you think, oh, we’ve been buddies for a long time. We’ve known each other for a long time. This will be better. It actually increases the likelihood of the partnership dissolving. Teams of former coworkers are the most stable. We often say that if you’re gonna sell your agency, the smoothest sale is to an employee or a group of employees. And by the way, Different topic for a different podcast. It’s also where you’re gonna make the most money.

But teams of former coworkers are the most stable. Even relative strangers held together better than buddies, better than friends. So as you’re thinking about doing this, be thinking about the relationship you already have with this potential partner. So it isn’t friends bad, strangers good. It’s this. Shared professional history under pressure is an asset. We’ve worked together before. We have come together, we’ve solved problems. Friendship is lovely and important, but it’s not evidence. And what it often does is it allows you to skip past some of those checks and balances that you actually should give before you decide whether or not you want to take a partner. We give our friends a pass. The fact that you have been friends together for 10 years matters. It matters personally and it’s important, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to them being a good business partner.

So also the fact that you were the boss and they were the employee, that’s a hierarchy with good chemistry, but it is not shared decision-making history. And so As, as you’re the majority partner, that feels great. But as things start to even out, or maybe you become the minority partner, now all of a sudden things get uncomfortable. So don’t assume that a personal relationship means a good business relationship. Myth number 2, equal partners, 50/50 partners is the fairest way to do this.

So I will tell you that a study done by Hellman and Wasserman showed they looked at almost 1,500 organizations. And what they found is that when the teams were at 50/50, their, their pure ability to make decisions was challenging. So what I mean by that is the most fast, comfortable, equal split isn’t the problem. It’s a symptom. What it’s— when 2 people go 50/50, what it means is that no one wants to have an uncomfortable conversation about who’s bringing what. Who’s actually more valuable to the business? Maybe who’s got more sweat equity in the business, who’s giving up what?

So it is the first failure warning sign that you cannot have a hard conversation. So maybe it is perfectly appropriate for you to be 50/50 as long as you have a good way of breaking ties. But oftentimes when you agree to be 50/50, when actually that’s not how it should be, One of you has more experience. One of you bring— is bringing more equity. One of you is bringing in more value into the equation, but you’re not willing to say that to your brand new, almost to-be partner. That should be a huge warning sign to you that you are not ready to have all the hard conversations that business partners need to have. You, I don’t care how much you love your business partner. I don’t care how brilliant they are. I don’t care how brilliant you are. You are going to have a lot of uncomfortable business conversations and you are going to have a lot of disagreements you have to resolve.

So the equal split is where conflict goes to hide and it comes out over and over and over again once the partnership is formed. Plenty of great partnerships are 50/50, right? But what I’m saying to you is if the equity conversation was easy, You skipped the very first conversation, hard conversation you should have as partners. All right. Myth number 3, find someone who’s strong where you’re weak and it’ll all work out. Everyone gives this advice and it is incomplete in a dangerous way.

So another study was by a guy named Coleman and his colleagues. They studied 104 2-person entrepreneurial teams and they separated kinds of differences. There was differences in innovativeness, right? Which helped performance and differences in risk-taking. So if you were different in terms of how innovative you are, that actually helped performance of the company. But you were, if you were different in how willing you were to take risk, that hurt the company because it created conflict that was hard to resolve.

So yes, having somebody whose skillset is strong where you are weak and vice versa is fine. But you need to match each other’s nervous system, right? And what I mean by that is that you both have about the same risk tolerance, because otherwise every time you go to take a risk, you are going to be in conflict with your partner. And odds are the more conservative of the two of you is gonna win most of those conflicts, which is going to cause a problem for your ability to advance the business forward.

So it might be whether you’re willing to sign a personal guarantee on a bigger office, right? Or whatever it may be. You’re gonna fight about every meaningful decision every time it comes up. And each one of you is gonna begin to form the opinion that the other one is either reckless or timid, depending on where they fall on the risk tolerance. So the 4th myth is kind of runs underneath all of this, which is a partner will make me less lonely. I wanna share this with someone.

I want half the burden off my shoulders. I want a comrade in arms. And you know what? Sometimes a great partner does all of that, but a partner also creates, for some of you, what would be a new category of loneliness. So they’re the things that you can’t say to your partner because they’re about your partner. So again, this gets back to being willing to have hard conversations and to have really candid, radical candor type of conversations. Ownership loneliness doesn’t disappear, it just kind of relocates, right?

So there were a couple studies around this, and so they, they actually analyzed 30 different studies and they found that relationship conflict was bad for performance and even worse for satisfaction. So what that means is that when you can’t talk to your partners, About where you are frustrated with them, where they’re— you feel like they’re dropping the ball or they’re, they’re not carrying their weight. All of which partners are gonna have these conversations at some point in time in their conversation, in their partnership. If you can’t have those conversations, it’s gonna impact both the performance of your agency and your own job satisfaction, right?

So it’s important to have the ability to have these conversations. And if you can have them while you’re setting up the partnership, It’s not going to get easier once you’re partners. So it’s important to be able to do that. You have to be able to untangle the challenges that you’re having and be able to put them out on the table and have that conversation. Where it crops up most is, and we do a lot of this work when we are helping in M&A work and we’re bringing a former employee up into a minority position or we’re merging 2 agencies together. One of the places where Danielle and I spend the most time is role articulation. Who’s going to do what? Who is responsible for what?

Because what these studies show is that role ambiguity, people not understanding or agreeing about what’s expected of them, actually becomes the deterrent that begins to destroy the way the agency performs. And the trust and confidence that the partners have in each other. Partnerships do not die from disagreeing. They die from not either— they die from not having, being able to have the conversation or not knowing who gets to decide when there’s conflict. Really important distinction.

All right, so I’m gonna take a break and then we’ll come right back and we’re gonna talk about the universal non-negotiables. So I’ll be right back and we’ll talk about those. Remember, these are the 9 things that are the gate that if you can’t check all 9 of these, then those are universal. A partner should be able to check these, right? 9 things, pass/fail, not scored. Candidate can be brilliant, likable, and genuinely talented and still fail at this. And if they fail, you should be done. You should not talk yourself into it. No amount of chemistry, allows them to come back into the mix.

Okay. That’s what we’re going to talk about after the break. We’ll be right back. I promise I’ll let you get right back to the show. But before I do, let’s be honest with each other. Most agencies lose deals not because they’re bad at their work, but because their proposals missed the mark. They weren’t client-centric enough. They weren’t specific enough. They weren’t strategic enough. That’s why we created the Getting It Right: Proposals That Win workshop. It is a live, in-person, hands-on workshop built specifically for agency owners who want to turn all the parts and pieces of written proposals, bios, case studies, your website, RFP responses, proposals themselves into real competitive advantages. This workshop is led by Robin and Steve Bowler from Mercer Island Group, and in the workshop you’re going to learn the art and the science of prospect-centric proposals. Uncovering true business issues, structuring a compelling story, and using the 5 elements that consistently lift win rates. You’re gonna see examples of good, the bad, and the ugly so you can steal from them and improve the work that you do.

So if you’re tired of pouring hours into proposals that go nowhere, you need to join us for this workshop and start submitting proposals that actually close business. The workshop is September 28th and 29th in Denver, and you can register at the Agency Management Institute website. All right, we are back and we’re gonna talk about the, what I think of as the non-negotiables. These are things that very quickly you should be able to, if somebody can’t check all 9 of these boxes, they should not be considered as a business partner.

So number 1, integrity under financial pressure. Not integrity in general, cuz everyone hopefully has that when there’s money in the bank. But in agency life, it shows up small, right? It shows up with how do we talk about billable hours that aren’t quite billable? Do we eat at this time means the agency eats it or the freelancer does. So the test around this is ask about a time they lost money on purpose to keep a promise and talk to their former bookkeeper or CFO. Not just their former boss. And if it’s someone that works for you, you’ve already watched them do this in practice. Number 2 of the non-negotiable is aligned time horizon. If you want out in 5 years and they want to build a 30-person firm, maybe that’s perfect for you.

But it also says that your partnership is going to be a little unbalanced. Each of you should write down separately the year that you intend to stop working full-time and what you want the agency to be worth. At that time, write it down and then trade papers. If they’re about the same, great, you’re on target. If they’re vastly different and they’re also 10 or 15 years younger than you, that might be the start of a completely different conversation, which is the succession conversation.

But you need to know what your time horizon is and how they are or aren’t aligned. Non-negotiable number 3 is aligned risk tolerance in agency life. That might mean we hire before we actually need someone, or signing a multi-year lease, or funding a new service line, or how you feel about carrying a credit line balance for a period of time. Put real decisions in front of them. Hey, here’s the actual pipeline or cash position. Would you hire a senior strategist in September or January? Create scenarios that test their risk tolerance, particularly around money. And then listen less to the answer and more to how they got there. What was the logic of their decision-making, right?

So are they— what are they weighing in that decision? Did they want more data? Did they decide in 9 seconds? Are they a maverick in making their decisions, especially when it’s going to be about your shared resources? Fourth non-negotiable: capacity for direct conflict. Can they say a hard thing To your face without softening it into vapor or without being so aggressive that it’s an attack? And even more important, can they hear a hard thing to their face if you position it without softening it into vapor or coming in so aggressively that it’s an attack? Conflict avoidance in a business partner is not politeness. It is a slow leak. You will slowly disintegrate your partnership over time if you cannot have those hard conversations.

So the test around this is disagree with them about something you actually care about in a room together, face to face. Don’t do it on Zoom. Don’t do it apart from each other. And then observe. Did they go quiet and did they just capitulate to you and then maybe send you a long email like at, you know, 1 a.m.? ‘Cause however they respond to that conflict, that’s your future. And you need to understand that that’s how you’re gonna deal with all conflicts moving forward. Non-negotiable number 5, do they have the tolerance to be told no? Different than 4. 4 is about conflict. Some people can fight just fine and will simply not lose.

So observe, and we’re gonna talk in my next solo cast, not this one, in my next one, we’re gonna talk about the framework, the timeframe of testing a new partner before you get into bed together. But in this case, I want you to, I want you to say no to something when, and then watch for 48 hours after the decision goes against them. Do they support it publicly and then relegate to talking about it sideways behind people’s back? Do they? And by the way, the disagreement, the fact that you’re not That they’re not gonna agree all the time is a given, but how they handle the disagreement, that’s the disqualifier. If they talk behind your back, if they throw you under the rug, if they try and manipulate someone else to influence the decision, that would be the disqualifier. You want someone to lose an argument and be able to accept it for what it is, especially if you’ve defined how you’re going to make those decisions. 6th qualifier is financial literacy. They don’t need to be a CFO, but they need to know how to read a P&L. They need to understand what AGI is versus gross revenue.

They need to know agency math. They need to understand how important billability and utilization is. They need to understand that profit on a piece of paper and cash in the bank are 2 different things. So the way you’re gonna test this is hand them 3 months of financials with, you know, things redacted if you’re not that far along, and then ask them what worries them about your financials. A literate financial partner will find things to at least ask questions about or raise concerns about within 10 or 15 minutes. And if they can’t do that, unless you are running the magic shop that has no financial concerns at all, which I’ve never seen, but unless they should be able to raise issues or ask good questions. 7th disqualifier is a shared definition of enough. Is a 30-person, very profitable agency a success or a failure? What, how, what is their measurement of success or enough? If one of you thinks of profit is the whole point of running an agency, and the other thinks that scale is, or award-winning or great creative, you’ve gotta understand what their enough is and what your enough is, and are they in alignment?

Because every reinvestment conversation becomes a fight around values if you are not aligned. Okay. Disqualifier number 8, or qualifier number 8, whichever way you want to look at this, is you want a business partner who has a track record of finishing things, not starting, finishing. Did they build a process that outlasted their attention span? Did they hire, develop, and keep someone Who’s now really great. So the test for this is references from people who worked for them 3+ years ago. What, what has lasted the test of time? What did they build from start to finish? You do not want a partner who has a million great ideas and cannot get any of them across the finish line. And number 9 is no hidden entanglements. And what I mean by that is, They don’t own other businesses. They don’t have side clients, or they don’t want to have side clients. There’s no agreements that you haven’t seen. There’s not a lot of debt that maybe they didn’t disclose right away. Uh, you don’t want to find out after you’ve become partners that they’re in the middle of a messy divorce or they have a health situation.

You want someone who is going to lay out their whole life on the table because here’s the deal. Business partnerships are not just a business thing. It is a whole life thing. You are, you are in partnership with their spouse’s spending habits. You are in partnership with the fact that they are taking care of 3 elderly parents. You are in partnership with all of the things in their life that are gonna influence how they show up at work. And equally, they’re in partnership with all of you and your life.

And so you need to be really clear and comfortable disclosing all of it. And anything you’re not willing to talk about or anything they’re not willing to talk about, this is a huge red flag. So all of the things I just rattled off, you know, debt, divorce, all of those things, uh, drinking problem. This is where owners get embarrassed and either don’t ask or don’t disclose. You need to ask and you need, in fairness, to disclose, right?

So you wanna make sure that you understand all of these things about a potential partner. And if any of them give you pause, any of them give you pause, this is not the partner for you. It doesn’t mean that partnership isn’t for you, but it does mean that this is not the partner for you. That’s the gate. It’s the entrance point. It’s not, it’s not about talent or likability or chemistry or reputation or whether or not you enjoy them or you’re buddies. All of those things matter, but the 9 things I just went through, they belong at the gate because they should screen out a fair amount of wrong fit candidates.

Okay, so again, let me let me just emphasize that’s only 30% of it, right? So we worked with an agency owner, and so he had a 22-person agency. It was had about four million dollars in AGI. His head of account services was a woman named Priya. Obviously, I’ve changed everyone’s names, but she was fantastic. She was great. She had worked for him for 7 years. And when she got recruited, this was before us, when she got recruited, Mark, the owner, offered her 15% that he would give her over 4 years.

So, he would gift her 15% of his business over 4 years. And of course, Of course, she said yes immediately. Everyone says yes when it’s free, whether they want it or not. They don’t, they don’t check whether or not they want to do it. They don’t check if they’re wired to do it, all of that. So Priya gets hired, she gets offered 15% over the course of 4 years, no money exchanged. Of course she says yes.

So now all of a sudden she’s worked for him for 7 years and Mark is starting to realize that he has taken on a business partner. So now he’s running the gate of these non-negotiables because now it’s— he’s starting to feel what that partnership is doing to him, right? So Priya clears 8 out of 9 pretty well. Number 5, the willingness to be told no, that had been a challenge for them in the past, right?

And so later, 12 months later, so he’s wrestling with this inside, but he’s already made the deal. So later, he is the majority partner, resigns a very difficult but profitable client, and Priya loudly disagrees. So in the meeting with the client, she’s fine. But over the course of the next 3 weeks, 4 different employees mentioned to Mark that Priya is talking to them about how she believes he made a mistake.

So she’s not being malicious necessarily. But she disagreed and they didn’t have a good way to resolve that conflict. And so now Mark, as a minority partner, everyone knows she’s a partner. Part of his company is owned by someone who’s kind of running a quiet kind of parallel company or government, right? So he made the offer sight unseen, didn’t know her. It was part of the recruitment process, which by the way, is always a bad idea. Never talk about partnership. In a recruitment process.

But he then comes to realize that they have this significant conflict where they cannot— they can agree to each other’s face on a decision, but if it resolves in a way that she’s not happy with, she’s going to undermine him every step of the way. And that partnership did not end well. He ended up buying her out. So he ended up buying what he had gifted to her to get her out of his business.

Because they kept having this conflict. So it’s super important that you use these gates, these 9 non-negotiables as your go/no-go. All right. So after that, then what? Now this becomes the most important part, which is the 70%. So this is the harder half. This is partnership is 30% universal and 70% you. The non-negotiables are disqualifiers and they screen people out who eventually are gonna hurt you and the business, or where you’re just gonna have conflict that you can’t resolve. They can’t predict whether a qualified person becomes a good partner because they don’t contain the other half of the equation, which is you. It’s, are they qualified to be a partner is what the 9 qualifiers or disqualifiers are about.

But it’s not a, are they the right partner for you? That’s what, what we’re gonna talk about next, and that’s what we’re gonna wrap up this episode with. And then I promise you, my next solo cast will say, if you’ve gone through all of this and you’re like, I still want a partner, I want to talk about how you work through a framework of testing and kind of baby stepping your way into that partnership.

But another episode for another time. So this is about screening out folks, right? And this is now what I want to talk about is whether or not you So now we’ve got a good candidate. Let’s say they clear all 9 of the qualifiers or the disqualifiers. They clear all 9 of those. So you take one person who clears all 9, and we’re going to put them into 2 different agencies with 2 different owners. I promise you, you’re going to get 2 different outcomes. Fit isn’t a property of a person. It’s a property of a pair of people.

So partnership fit is not all about them. It is about the two of you. So again, gate is 30%, but now we’re gonna talk about what I think of as a mirror. So you’re gonna start looking at yourself and thinking about how you show up in a business context, because you’ve gotta have a really clear understanding of you to decide whether or not this person who could be someone’s good business partner is qualified to be your good business partner.

All right. So 6 questions I want you to ask yourself. Number 1, what are my actual weaknesses? Not the ones that I admit in cocktail parties. Everybody has public weaknesses that they’ve sort of made peace with. I’m not a details person. That’s always a safe one, especially for agency owners who are supposed to be visionary. Right. But the real ones that you haven’t said out loud are the ones that you really have to understand. You have to look at, for example, what are some common problems that keep reoccurring in your agency? If you’ve hired 4 operations people in 6 years, the ops role probably isn’t the problem. It’s probably something you are doing. If your last 3 senior hires all weren’t quite senior enough, maybe you are someone who doesn’t like to share authority or to delegate or to release control. It’s not a good or bad, it’s just a truth. If that’s true, let’s say you are someone who’s not good at sharing authority. If that’s true, a partner may be the worst possible answer to the reasons why you’re thinking of taking on a partner, your loneliness and your desire to share some of the load.

And you’re going to spend 10 years trying to make a peer behave like a really expensive employee and never allowing them to actually be your business partner. So that’s the kind of thing I’m looking for. What, what are some of my weaknesses that might get in the way? Of me actually being a good partner. So the second question I want you to ask yourself is, do I really want a partner or do I really want a great number 2? This is sort of a fork in the road, and it may be one of the most important things that we talk about in this episode. You want a number 2 if what you want is capacity, execution, and someone who runs the place really well. And does the things that you don’t like to do, right?

So you can do all the things that you’re really good at. So for many of you, having a COO that runs the day-to-day operations of your agency while you can go out and sell and sort of create the vision of the future for the agency, that’s actually what you want. It’s not a partner, it’s a great COO or a great number 2. You, when you are— when you have a great number 2, They’re running the agency. You’re doing what you love to do, but you get to keep the final vote. A great number 2 absolutely changes an agency owner’s life, makes it easier. The change comes faster, and it is far easier to reverse if that number 2 in the long run doesn’t work out. It’s much easier to separate from a number 2 than a partner. You want a partner rather than a number 2 if and only if you genuinely believe that you don’t always have the right answer, that you genuinely want to be outvoted sometimes, that you genuinely want someone who will go toe-to-toe with you and disagree. Not, can I tolerate disagreement, but can I live with losing? Can some— I— can I be okay that someone else was right, or that the leadership team decided someone else was right when I was in the minority?

Because a partner who can never beat you, who can never override you, who can never have the right answer, isn’t a partner. And they will figure that out and be frustrated. And eventually, again, you’re going to go through a business divorce, which is super expensive. So one question that you can ask yourself makes this pretty concrete, which is when you imagine saying to your business partner, who I know you don’t have yet today, but you’re going to have, Hey, we’re doing it my way because I own more of it. I’m the majority owner, so I win. Does that give you relief or shame?

So again, if you are going to look at your partner and say, look, I trump you because I own more, then that is a problem, right? That means you need— if you feel relief, it means you want a number 2, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can give a great number 2 real economic upside without giving away ownership. You can do profit sharing, you can give ’em phantom equity, you can do, you can give ’em long-term incentive plans with vesting. They, those are real. They carry tax plan design complexity.

So it’s definitely, you’re gonna have to sit down with your CPA or your attorney, but there are lots of things you can do to make a number 2 feel like an owner and reward them like an owner. Owner without giving them the power to override you. And if, and if that’s really who you are, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s important to recognize it before you take on a partner so you don’t have to give away ownership to make someone feel like an owner or to give away your power as the owner.

Okay. Third question I want you to ask, how fused are you with the agency? When someone criticizes the agency’s work, does it feel like a critique or an insult? If your identity and the agency are the same object, a partner will feel really uncomfortable because every time they improve something or make it better, you’re gonna hear the way you were doing it was wrong. I made it better, or I took over a part of the business that you weren’t as good at.

And so if your identity is really fused with the agency, then a partner may not work well for you. Question number 4, what is your conflict style? Not the way you want to talk about it, but the truth. Ask 3 people who work for you. Ask your best friend, ask your spouse, when I’m upset, what do I do? And then be quiet and let them tell you. If the honest answer is you go quiet and then you bring it up 3 weeks later, you need to understand that. If it’s a, you come in hot like a bull in a china shop, you need to know that. You are entering into a partnership, a relationship where conflict is structural, permanent, and can’t be resolved by firing someone.

So you need to know how you’re gonna show up because that’s a conversation that you And anyone who checks through the 9 non-negotiables, anyone who checks through those, this is a conversation you need to have. How, here’s how I show up. How do you show up in conflict and how do we resolve that, whatever that may be? Question number 5, what’s my 5-year exit intent? And have I already talked about it with my life partner, whoever that is?

The truth is, for most of you, most of your net worth is tied up in your agency. And you have to know how you’re going to handle that. So if you’re going to sell or give away a slice of your family’s largest asset at a price that you feel is appropriate, you need to be thinking about how does that impact your exit. So your life partner, if you have one, is a stakeholder whether or not you invite them in, right? And by the way, so is your potential partner’s life partner or spouse or whatever They have in their life. This is a family business, whether you’re, whether your spouse is a part of the business or not. It is the biggest thing your family owns. It’s probably what’s been funding your family’s lifestyle.

And so how you give away or sell shares of the business is important. So the conversation that you’re avoiding is one where you say out loud, hey, if this goes badly, here’s what it costs us. If I sell 20% of the business and then we tank the business, Here’s what the impact is gonna be on our family. Here’s what I’ve personally guaranteed. Uh, and by the way, you might be the minority, you might be merging with a, a bigger agency, so you’re gonna take a minority position.

So here’s the risk I’m putting us in financially. Uh, how long could we go without a distribution if things don’t go well? How the business runs and what the business outcomes are, are going to be different when you take on a partner. Good, bad, or indifferent, but it’s going to be different. And you and your, your family need to know what you’re willing to risk. Right? Okay.

So, sixth question you need to ask yourself: Is the loneliness that I’m feeling, is the sense of overwhelm, is the I just want to share this with somebody, this burden with somebody—is it a business problem or a personal problem? Some of the loneliest agency owners I know don’t need a business partner. They need a peer relationship outside of the company. So 2 hours a month of not being the smartest person in the room, coming to a peer group every 6 months and sharing the highs and the lows with other agency owners, they— that may actually solve the problem for you, right? If you’re waking up at 3:00 AM, uh, if you are finding that you’re drinking more than you used to, if you are separating from your family, a business partner’s not gonna solve any of that.

And so you really have to assess, am I lonely, but I would love to be surrounded by peers who understand my world and we can learn from and share with each other what that is? That’s different than a business partner. Am I really lonely and I’m starting to pull away from everybody that I love because I’m so lonely? Maybe that’s not a business partner. Maybe that’s, and I say this with Understanding and affection and love, but maybe that’s a therapist or a doctor or a real sabbatical or a vacation, right?

So sometimes the, the sense of wanting to share the burden is really not a partner decision at all. It is a bigger life decision, and you just need to really understand that about yourself. A partner is a business decision that will absolutely affect your life. Good, bad, or ugly. It is not a life decision that you can solve with business paperwork. So if you’re trying to buy your way out of how you’re feeling right now, you’re gonna pick badly. Again, remember, if you’re doing a partnership because of you need relief, you need to figure out what you’re trying to solve and what you’re trying to relieve before you take on the partner. A partner should be additive. A partner should be not— it’s not about taking something off your shoulders.

But it should be about plussing up. 2 2 5. That’s a good partnership, right? You don’t wanna buy your way out of how you’re feeling because relief is a really terrible evaluator. So, all right, you’ve been through the gate, you’ve answered the 9 questions, you’ve got your non-negotiables, you know yourself well, you know that you’re in a good place mentally, emotionally, financially to take on a partner.

Now, how do you go through the evaluation process and how do you decide? Because by the way, for most of you, here’s what it looks like. It is literally 4 dinners and then you sign something. It’s like 4 good conversations, but they’re not really deep conversations. I’m hoping the 9 qualifiers or disqualifiers, however you wanna look at those, and the 6 questions you need to ask about yourself and understand about yourself, I’m hoping that will elongate the evaluation process. Process so that you don’t just decide.

So in my next solo cast, I’m going to walk you through a framework that’s going to work— go between 90 days and 180 days, right? So, and for the first 3 months or so, it’s before anything is done. So nothing signed, nothing’s been announced. If you can get through the first 3 or 4 months without telling the team That urgency is information and that’s not a good thing.

And so I want you to be able to get through that and be able to kick each other’s tires before you sign any documents or you make it permanent, because a business partnership is a very expensive thing to dissolve. It is expensive emotionally, mentally, financially, and it can do incredible damage to your business. And so I want you to, I want you to phase into it. Appropriately.

And so we’re gonna talk about that in my next solo cast, cuz otherwise this is gonna be 3 hours long. So I’m hoping this was helpful for you. Again, first of all, asking yourself hard questions about why you think you need a partner and do you need a partner or do you want a number 2 or do you need something different? And then if you think you really do need a partner and your business would benefit from that, again, 2 2 5. Then when you go looking for a partner, first and foremost, understanding who you are, how you show up, what is important to you. And then secondly, going through those 9 qualifiers or disqualifiers to weed out anybody who you shouldn’t even be considering before you think about whether or not— so 9 qualifiers, should they be anybody’s partner? The other topics that we talked about, those 6 questions to understand about yourself, Are they the right partner for me? And am I the right partner for them? Very different.

Okay. All right. So that wraps up this episode. I would just suggest for many of you, I know you’re kicking around this idea. So listen to this episode and then just let it kind of soak in, let it sort of permeate your back of mind, kind of, you know, where all the thoughts just sort of percolate a little bit and just see how it feels. It is a, in many cases, it is, it is a permanent relationship, whether you stay in partnership or not, because some of the good and bad of partnership lingers long after the partnership is dissolved.

So you want to make sure that you enter into this thoughtfully and wisely for yourself, for your team, for your clients, and for your future. Okay. All right. I’ll see you next week with a guest. And thanks again for listening. I’m grateful for you. Come back next week for another episode designed to help you build a stronger, more stable, and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and other professional development opportunities at agencymanagementinstitute.com.