A short coaching-style YouTube conversation (Capitalism.com) between Ryan Daniel Moran and a caller, Sufan, about a failing business partnership. The caller explains that his partner lost motivation—being preoccupied with cryptocurrency—and although they had defined roles, the caller ended up doing both partners' work, creating resentment. Ryan advises that the caller must sustain his own drive independent of partners (maintain excitement and consistent effort) so the business and partners follow his lead; he also suggests treating ventures as fun projects while leaving room for larger ideas to emerge.
Chapters
Good morning, Sufan. How are you doing?
Good man. Long time listener, first time caller. Good.
Well, it's good to meet you. What can I do for you?
So I'm at like an interesting transitional space. Had a business that I was working on with a partner over the last year or so, and it's kind of become obvious that it's just not a good partnership, so.
Cool. So a couple of questions. First of all, why didn't the last partnership work out?
You know, I would say the short version is my partner in that project is very high on the cryptocurrency train. And so I think mentally, essentially, he's already a billionaire in where he feels that investment is going. So his drive and enthusiasm to just continue to show up on a, on a daily basis for that project has just kind of crashed and burned.
Did you have clear roles and responsibilities about how the two of you were different in the project?
We did, yeah.
So the observation that I want to point out is this story you've got about your partner is that he never had the fire to be able to scale the business. And the result is you have lost your fire in scaling the business. The reality is, or my prediction would be that if you had that fire independent of your partner, your partner would come on board. So if you had the same level of drive as you did that moment that you and your partner were sitting around going, that would be a good idea. If you were able to maintain that level of excitement without the need for your partner, partner to grow or to do anything, the business would follow your lead and so would your partner. Now the reason why I bring that up and talk about that is because we tend to bring our past expectations of partners into new partnerships. So your tendency is to wait for someone else to maintain the momentum for you to keep your excitement. There's nothing right or wrong about that. It probably makes you a more communal leader than out in front leader, which is my type of leadership for the most part as well. If you're aware of that, then you can be okay with the fact that some of your partners or the people that are in the business will have periods of high excitement and low excitement. Your job is to maintain a consistent level of growth and excitement regardless of what other people are doing. So for you, the big question is, what project do you pick that is exciting, motivating, and big enough for you to maintain that level of focus and excitement so that you're in that position to be able to grow consistently for a very long time?
Where I've struggled with that is you know we're equal partners but I'm like having to like baby you to get you to take each little step along that journey and then yeah definitely got to the point where after trying that so many times continuing to do my side of things and then starting to creep into like then fulfilling his responsibilities as well then it starts to feel like resentment correct?
Yes. So if you bring a set of business expectations into this and it doesn't stay fun then you will have the boredom and resentment start to creep into all areas of life. So I would encourage you to think about this like a fun project and to leave space for the billion or multimillion dollar idea that is going to percolate over time even if you don't know what that is right now. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran from capitalism.com we help entrepreneurs build seven figure businesses. When you're ready for us we'll be ready for you and you can start your journey@capitalism.com start.
