The Agreement that Saves Partnerships

Business Brain, episode 646 for Wednesday, May 7, National Homebrew Day 2025. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a couple of ideas, we tune them. Well, we don't tune the. Sometimes we tune the idea. Sometimes we use the idea to tune our business brains so that we can each keep on living those charmed lives. Our sponsors for this episode include a new one, square.com go brain, where you can save up to 200 bucks off of Square hardware when you sign up at that link and@macaudio.com brain sound source, one of my favorite apps for letting you route audio on your Mac. So if you, like, want, you know, zoom to come out of your headphones and your Spotify or music app to come out of your speakers, you can do all that with Sound Source. We'll talk about both of those things in a little bit for now here on National Homebrew Day in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton, and I wish.

I was drinking a homebrew. I'm Shannon Jean, still out here in Lafayette, California.

Yeah. You ever done the homebrew thing, Shannon? You know, no, I have, but if you asked me that question three months ago, I would have said no. My family got me a kit.

Oh, that's cool.

Years ago. No, like pre Covid, they bought me this kit and I never did anything with it. And then my son and I had a rainy day a couple of months ago, and I was like, you know what? Let's make that beer. And so we did. It was a Mr. Beer Kit, and it's an interesting business model.

Yeah, that's cool.

And. And actually there's another business model. It's worth talking about this because we did the Mr. Beer thing. It comes with the wart and the. The. Which is like the. The. The. The mix of everything that's going to make your beer. It comes with yeast, which over. After seven years, the yeast was no bueno. So I had to get yeast for $9 on Amazon or something. But it comes with the. The little container that you brew it in and then bottles to bottle it. And the carbonation tablets, which is really just sugar. And the cleaner, which is kind of important because you have to be able to clean with something that's not soap.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, but we did it and it came out. Actually came out really good. It was. It was fine.

We bottle tastes pre.

We bottled it last weekend. I have no idea what the ABV is on it because we didn't float a level before. And after that's really the best way to tell is. Is. Yeah, but. But it was interesting. And then to. If we want to buy another kit of the. The wart and the yeast and all that stuff, I think it works out to be about. Through that system, about A$50 a beer.

Which isn't a good deal.

Which isn't bad. Yeah, no, it's a great deal.

I found paid anyway. I just paid $5 a pint. If I bought a four pack, it was 20 bucks.

Well, that's. And then that's the other model as. It's funny because we. We did the Mr. Beer thing, and when we drank it, my son, we came up with a name for it. We called it Rogue Hops because we watched Rogue One that day, the movie. And. And it worked out great because it was, you know, this. This. Yeah, I like that weird beer that kind of. It took a. Took a journey or whatever. And that we. My son logged it in that untapped app, you know.

Oh, cool.

And so I was like, oh, thanks for putting it untapped. And so we, you know, I went and like, said yes. I did this homebrew thing. The next day, untapped sends me an email saying, hey, do you want to sign up for this Pinter thing? And now Pinter is interesting. It's. It's a. It's a homebrew, but far less flexible but far simpler and much faster. It's done in like seven to nine days instead of three weeks or something.

I see.

But you get this thing, and they are not a sponsored episode. You get this thing that you pour the mix into and water and then that's it. You brew it for like four or five days and then you chill the whole thing for another, you know, two or three days. And then it's, It's. It's its own keg. It's got a tap and all that stuff.

That's cool.

And this works out to be about 350 a beer.

They need to sponsor us. I mean, clearly.

Clearly. And the deal that I got through Untapped for this was that you get the. The unit is free. You just buy like two kit.

Two.

Two packs of, of beer each. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty smart business, right? They marketed to the right person at the right time.

I love it. In my circles, there's just not hardly any beer drinkers left. As I've gotten older, like, I. I had a dual tap kegerator at my house forever. And, you know, I'd. We'd Buy the. The mini kegs and fill them in there and all that stuff. And it was. It was. I. I loved it. But now I hardly can get anybody to drink beer with me.

Interesting.

Yeah. And so here, Here, I think it's.

Because you're in wine country or near wine country. Ish.

Maybe that's true. There are definitely a lot of wine people. But I mean, I don't get me wrong, I enjoy a great bottle of wine as well.

Sure.

But, you know, a good beer, man, it's priceless.

Yeah, I agree. No, it's. It's nice now that my. My son is, like, old enough to. To not just drink, but to have a palate for it too. So. Yeah, that's cool. We kind of have fun with it. And it was. It was a great little father, son kind of. Kind of project.

Oh, I bet that's really cool.

So, yeah, it was a blast. Yeah.

Yeah.

I told him. I was like, I'm glad we waited because he wasn't old enough to drink beer when we. When we did this, when I got the Perfect. So, yeah, it worked out good. Yeah. Yeah.

That's awesome.

You got to be talking about. I. I have some quick tips to make.

Sure.

Go ahead. You want to. You want to offer one?

Sure. I just want a quick tip before we get to our main. The main meat of our. Our topic today. I was kind of going through some stuff on my website and everything else, and it reminded me of a quick tip. I'm sure we've talked about it. Well, maybe we've talked about it here before, but that is when you're putting up your product photos or pictures of your facility or whatever you're doing on your website or on a listing. If, let's say you sell products on a marketplace or whatever, mix in client reviews and testimonials with your photos. Oh, so. So that your prospective buyers, clients, whoever, don't have to go search for those reviews and testimonials. They're looking at some photos either maybe of your previous work, maybe of your. The product you're selling. And as they click through, you know, every fifth photo or something like that, put up a review of the product or a review of your service just because you'll catch them. Boom, right there. And it works. When you're doing. Yeah, vacation rentals, you. We do it when people are looking through pictures of the house. You. You do a snap and just take a screenshot of the review and save it as a JPEG or a PNG and include it. When you're uploading all your stuff and it'll just live right there with it. That's my quick tip for the day.

I like that one, man. That's really good. That's really smart. Oh, yeah, yeah. It also reminds me of a future topic we're going to have, but not for today.

Can you top that quick tip?

Maybe? I don't think I can top it. I think that's a really good quick tip. I'd have no reason to top it. I'm just going to share another one.

I was just thinking of some sort of competition that we could have here. Could the Quick Tip Challenge.

I like the Quick Tip Challenge. You can vote for your Tell us.

Which is your favorite quick tip.

That's what I mean. That's fine.

You get the listeners can vote. Go to. Yeah, let us know where. I don't know where they'd go to.

Vote, but we could put it up on Spotify when the episode goes up. We can put a poll up. They put a poll on X when the episode goes live.

Yeah. Okay, we'll think about that.

My tip is when you're negotiating a large transaction that. Where you're using attorneys and it could be, you know, a variety of different things, always make this prediction upfront. And you are going to make this to the person on the. With whom you are negotiating. Right. Presumably, a transaction doesn't start with attorneys. Right. It usually starts like if. Right. If you were going to. If you were going to come in and either do a huge deal together or acquire a business or whatever those things are.

Yeah.

It would start with you and me talking and then we'd say, okay, this is a deal we want to put together now. We need to get our attorneys involved and make sure that, you know, all the T's are crossed and the eyes are dotted and all that stuff. And the prediction goes something like this. At some point, Shannon, our attorneys are going to try and kill this deal. And that's when you and I are going to need to have a direct conversation and decide which of their advice we take and which we are each willing to take a leap of faith and ignore. But today is not that day, Shannon. We're going to let our attorneys do their jobs. But at some point, one or both of them is going to try and kill that deal. And that's when you and I are going to have another conversation. And the reason you make this prediction up front, it's not a prediction, it is a truth. But the reason you say it up front is because the day that we talk about doing this deal and all that. That's a friendly, happy, productive, collaborative day.

Honeymoon. Honeymoon.

It's the honeymoon. Right. And then the attorneys are going to make us hate each other and want to fight each other. And that's why you pave that path today when everything is all hunky dory and everybody's all happy. Because when that day comes, I need to be able to call you and say, shannon, do you remember? We're in the middle of it right now, man. And do you remember didn't. Didn't we talk about this? And don't call it your. Like I don't show. I wouldn't show up and say, do you remember when I said. Because that sounds like I told you so. You remember when we had that conversation? I can't remember which one of us said it. Somebody. Right. You come in really soft. Yeah.

It's pre suasion is what it is.

Re suasion. Oh.

Because what you're doing is setting the table that. Oh, we're going to be on the same. The same side. Our attorneys, of course, got to work out the details, but they're both kind of on the other side of the table.

Yeah.

But when we. When, you know, when we run into this. This issue, you and I will be able to talk, and we're going to get it resolved.

Yeah. That's the key.

I like it.

That's.

That's a good tip. Yeah, I'd vote for that. Yep.

I vote for that. See, I'd vote for yours because I already knew mine.

There we go.

Well, so we're even. So you folks have to. We'll find a way to put up this. This thing, and then you'll have to vote.

I love it.

All right, the next thing I want to do is tell you about our sponsors because. Well, as we know, running a business is like juggling chainsaws on a unicycle during a tax audit, all while smiling. But somehow, every time I go to Tideline and Tap to pay or grab a bite over at Bame restaurant, I am reminded that with our sponsor, Square, it doesn't have to feel that way. Seriously, in the last month alone, I've used Square at Tideline and Bombay and the Stone Church and Tim's drunken sauces and rubs. And every time the checkout is so fast, it feels like I'm living that charmed life we always talk about here on the show. Square isn't just a sleek card reader. It is the full suite, point of sale, online store, inventory, customer insights Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if it started offering life advice or helping me with my fantasy football picks. Next entrepreneurs, this one's for you. Streamline your chaos. Stop chasing your tail and start serving your customers with something that actually works. Square keeps up so you don't have to slow down. Get everything you need to run and grow your business without any long term commitments. And why wait? Right now you. You can get up to $200 off square hardware at square.com Go Brain. That's S Q U-A-R-E.com G O/B-R-A-I-N square.com Go Brain. Run your business smarter with Square and get started today. All right. And you know what's underrated? Silence. Or at least the power to control the noise. And that's why I use and love an app called Sound Source from Rogue Amoeba. Because I'm not just podcasting. I'm conducting a symphony of apps, all screaming for my attention. And Sound Source. Well, it's my baton. This tiny but mighty menu bar app lets me dial in the volume on an app by app basis. Choose where the output volume from any app goes. So if I want something to go to my, you know, zoom to my headphones and music to my speakers, or the opposite, whatever, and add real time effects, all without opening 12 system preference panes and sacrificing a goat to the Mac OS gods, that's what Sound Source does. You want Spotify quieter than Safari. Done. Want to send Zoom to your headphones, but YouTube to a speaker in another room so your cat can watch squirrels in stereo? Also done. So go to macaudio.com brain to try sound source and then you can save 20% with coupon code Brain. But only through the end of May. No subscriptions. Just smart software you own. Get control, get calm, get back to building your empire. Our thanks to Rogue Amoeba for making Sound Source and for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, I think it's time we revisit a topic.

Yeah, I do want to revisit a topic. And it's a topic that. It's about partnerships. And I have always done really well with partnerships. Except when they've gone terribly wrong.

Oh, same.

Yes.

But I would still do it again.

I have done it over and over, but I have.

I have had disastrous experiences with.

So have I.

One, arguably two. But like, utterly disastrous. I'm not going to talk about it.

No, that's not the show. But there is a way to avoid most problems with a partnership. And We've talked about it on the show, and it's a concept that I, you know, I call it the working agreement. It's not a contract. It's not a, you know, any sort of business plan. It's. It's nothing like that. It's a. It's a precursor to all of that stuff. And the way it works is this. It's a. It's a document, it's a template. You can go download a copy at. I don't know. I don't know the URL, But Dave will put it in the show.

In the show notes already. Yeah.

And. And you can get that at BusinessBrain Show. Download this template. And it's basically an outline adding some structure and accountability to a project that you're working on, something that may turn into a business or a business that you're gonna, you know, go in with somebody. And it's. It's. It's terrific on a number of levels. And one that's kind of a hidden level that may be the most important. It's terrific because it brings a bunch of accountability, especially if you are like, maybe have a friend that you guys have talked, you're sitting around drinking some of that home brew like Dave made, and you start going, we should start a business. I love those conversations. I have them all the time, you know, and I. That's a great idea. How do we do this and what's going on? But I need to be very clear to the people that we're talking this at some point, not over beers, but that maybe next few days, if somebody follows up and there's some legs to it, you want to share this working agreement template and say, hey, look, we had this great conversation. Let's kind of detail out how to.

Take it to the next level. Yep.

Take it to the next level. How could this business work? Who would do what? How does it make money? How do we split the responsibilities? Who's accountable for what? All those scary words, right? Which is important. And all these things it kind of lays out. Here's the conversation we had over beers. Here's why we think this is going to work. Here's what the business will do, here's what Shannon will do, here's what Dave will do, and here's how we're going to measure success, right? We're going to do this, we're going to do that. Here's how the proceeds will be split, whose resources that we'll use.

If.

If you grab that working agreement template, it's all there, and it Helps you. It's kind of like there's a term that the. What's it called? Marriage encounters or engaged encounter before you get married. There's a thing that the Catholic Church does, actually, and I went to it before I got married 31 years ago, that you spend a weekend answering all these hairy questions like, you know, how do you want to raise kids? And how do you want all the things that often get brushed over? Yeah, that's what the working agreement does. It pushes all those questions to the top. To where your beer drinking buddy says, well, wait, I don't.

I didn't think about this over the third beer.

Yeah, yeah, I've got a job. How would I do this? How would I do. Wait, how would this work into this? So it may turn out that you want to still create this business, but perhaps your beer buddy wants. Needs to be an employee.

Right?

Maybe. Maybe. And so.

Or some version of that. Yeah, that's right. Maybe you could be an employee with a, With a, With a stake in the business. But they need to take a salary. You don't. You need to take a salary, they don't. Whatever that looks like.

Whatever it looks like.

Talking about it before anybody starts doing any work is the key.

Huge.

But here's my favorite part about the working agreement. Shannon.

Yes.

Is the working. The secret to it is that the working agreement is the first project you're doing together and you get test. It's a test. That's right. You get to learn what it's like collaborating on something productive with this person. That's really what you're looking for here.

It's a true. It is the. It is the most valuable thing because I can't tell you how many, quote, partnerships it has steered me away from. When I fill out everything that I'm going to do and I send it over and nothing comes back, or, oh, yeah, I'm going to get to that. Or they, you know, kind of hash, Hash, you know, half, whatever, don't do very good job. You look and go, well, how about this? And. And if you can't get good answers, if they don't act in a timely manner, they can still be your beer drinking buddy or your friend you met or another business owner. There's nothing wrong with that. But you've avoided what could be some of the pitfalls. One of the things I really like is there's also a friendship clause in the working agreement, because I have run businesses with my friends and a number of times and they've turned out great. But the Friendship clause basically states, hey, we're friends before we're starting this. We don't know if this is going to work out. We all agree that everyone has the best intentions. We're going to work to the best of our ability. If it doesn't work out, which is highly probable that it doesn't work out.

That's most likely.

Yeah. And that's okay because it's an experiment and it could lead to something else and you just never know. But what you don't want to put at risk is your friendship that you've had for.

Yeah, that's the only. You're putting maybe money at risk. You're putting time at risk together. All of that, the friendship is off the table.

That's it. You want. If everything goes south and it turns out not to work out, it was not a great idea. You know, you want to be able to sit around and have beers with this person.

The beers need to continue. That's right. Or whatever. Future.

Joke around and to tell the story like, wow, we tried to start this, you know, heavy equipment business for toddlers, and it just didn't work. But, wow, what a great experience that we had. And we laughed about it and we realized that we were idiots or whatever. But that value of your friendship and recognizing it in the agreement kind of lowers. Okay, okay, we're gonna do our best. We're all gonna try this kind of thing. But if you can get past the working agreement, the chances of your partnership working out are just exponentially higher.

Oh.

Than if you just roll in and, you know, start talking about this and start talking about. Oh, yes, it'll be great. Let's start tomorrow and open a bank account. That's a bad way to do it.

Oh, no, no, no.

Yeah, no. So go get a copy of it. Businessbrain Show. We'll put it in the show notes for this episode. It. It is a lifesaver. If you have questions about it. Feedback at Businessbrain show, or you can find Dave up on X at Dave Hamilton or me up on X at Shannon Jean, be glad to talk about it.

Yeah, it's a. It's a wonderful thing. And I would say, because I'm. My wife and I are talking about starting another business from scratch, and I will do this working agreement with her.

Oh, yeah, It's a good one.

I mean, I'll do it with. With anybody. Of course it's good because why wouldn't we want to just articulate the things we. Obviously we work well together. We're. We're not at 31 years. We're only at 26. But, you know, whatever. That's right. Exactly. But. But really like making sure we both know what like let's not let anything fall through the cracks on this.

That's right.

At the very least. Yeah. Yeah.

Well.

And who knows?

What am I?

Maybe we'll get to the end of it. Yeah.

What am I, what do I. What am I doing? And oh, what you don't want to have is oh, I thought you were going to take care of that. And that, that's, that's what you're trying to avoid. So check out the working agreement. Let us know what you'd like to add to it. We'd love to hear from you.

Yeah. Feedback at businessbrain show and thank you so much for listening. Tell a friend about the show. You got an entrepreneur buddy, maybe the person you're going to send a working agreement to Send them the show. Keep living that charmed life. We'll see you.

See you.