Justin GordonFounder, The LA Grind & The SF Grind

Want to Succeed? Find Someone Who Balances You Out

6 May 2025 · 1 min

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In this interview excerpt, the entrepreneur (Speaker B) explains why choosing the right business partner is crucial. He identifies two primary reasons partnerships fail: a partner lacking moral integrity and an imbalance in the value each person contributes. He recounts how he and his co‑founder Dan became roommates, then co‑captains of a self‑storage venture, agreeing to a 50/50 split with little deliberation. Their partnership succeeded because their skills complemented each other—Speaker B handled fundraising and bank negotiations while Dan managed day‑to‑day operations and supplied cash. The story illustrates the importance of moral alignment and balanced contributions in building a thriving business partnership.

Chapters

Your partner in this, in your business as well with the self-storage. Tell me more of like meeting him, how you guys decided to work together. Tell me more about him.
I think a business partnership is very, very important. Partnerships go wrong in 2 areas. Either they don't have your best interests in mind, they're going to literally be a morally unsound individual. I think that's fairly rare if you pick people right. The more likely scenario is that there's an imbalance of the value added to the business. That's, that's the second. Really, those 2 reasons are the only reasons why partnerships fail. Him and I were co-captains on the team. We were roommates in an apartment. I needed the basement of his place to store a bunch of stuff in Storage Squad. So I went in and shook hands with him. We went 50/50 on the, on the business. Not a lot of thought, not a lot of consideration, but it turned out to be an amazing decision because he just happened to be a badass. I was the guy who was tasked with raising the money and convincing the banker to loan us the money while Dan was tasked with running our main business and putting cash in our accounts. So it was, it was a great partnership in those early days.