How to create a successful partnership

Hey YouTube, this is Cody and Christian back for this week's video. We are going to be talking about how to make a successful partnership. A lot of people say partnerships are the only ship that doesn't float, and we are here to tell you that that is just not true. And we want to share a couple of tips that we utilized, at least working together over the past year, to make sure that everything we're doing works together cohesively so that we can go accomplish more together. Than we could on our own.

Now, before we dive into the whole video, I do want to say partnerships are hard, like any relationship. And from what I've seen, most partnerships don't last forever. There are a lot of roadblocks. People get different plans. You have to stay in alignment. It is very difficult to do. So when you're engaging in a partnership, don't go into it lightly. Most of them will be more difficult than they're worth. That being said, Cody and I have had a partnership over the last year that's been phenomenal. I foresee this remaining phenomenal for a long time. We've been through some hardship. We've been through a lot of great things together. So in today's video, we're going to share what works. I do want to start by saying this is not easy to do. Tread carefully.

And we've both had less than ideal partnerships where it's— there's some stories that go beyond what we can share on YouTube. They've been pretty crazy. So We've been through bad times and we've been through good times, and Christian and I have not just had this crazy uphill the whole— or downhill easy time through the business space. We've had hard times and we've had to go through that together, but it's a lot more fun doing it together than it is doing it alone. So Christian, what's our number one task, or how do we really handle this as individuals working together?

So starting out in the very beginning, both people did all things because there's just a ton to do and like we didn't own a lot of property together yet. So it's like, well, let's go buy property. So it's just Cody and I finding deals. The roles are more or less the same, which I'll go more into later on the ability to both do the other's role. But for us on the day-to-day, Cody is the best at bringing in new business. Cody's also a fantastic brand. Like he started really, really, really young and has accomplished a lot. I like Cody being the forward-facing person in our company. Cody's also very good at finding new opportunities, and he's phenomenal at lining up new capital to those opportunities. The analogy we always use is Cody brings in the fish. Along with all of that, there are a lot of management, there's a lot of paperwork, legal, accounting. There's a lot of background that goes on there, and while I enjoy being in the field, I can remember to do all that stuff better than Cody. So when we run these, it's probably about 80/20, but Cody does 80% of the acquisition, I do 80% of the admin. Either of us could do the other job, but we're so much better together where the situation— and I think that's true of any partnership that's really functional— 1 1 3. I mean, I get more than 2 of me could get done.

Yeah, this isn't a linear— I mean, I mean, this doesn't add up mathematically, but being able to work and bounce ideas off of each other allows us to effectively scale and it makes us more, much more efficient. Because I am slower when it comes to admin stuff. I can do it and I did a lot of it today and I am overwhelmed. That is not my typical space and I don't really like to operate there. However, there's some stuff that I had to get done And there's just not enough time in the day for a single person to go take on everything by themselves. You have to delegate some tasks and you can do that through employees or you can do it through partnerships. And what we found is that when you align people that have the same goals and you involve equity in the, in the middle of that, it's not just, hey, you're getting a paycheck, but we're building something together. We're actually going to get equity in this over the long term. That shows commitment, and behind that commitment, it strengthens, strengthens the relationship. Absolutely.

And when you have a strong relationship with a set target where Cody's bringing the fish, I'm building out the boat to hold the fish, and that ship is sailing in the right direction, everyone is unified, now you have a crew that can get there. And within that structure, now you start adding in, okay, who are our supporting players? Who, who fits as the perfect employee? Are there other strategic partners that you work with for various goals? You start stacking your team and putting the crew on the boat and building the boat, and it just becomes its own ecosystem.

And then on the side of that, you also have to set out your goals. We are aligned with our goals, but they're not exactly the same. I want to retire my mom, and Christian wants to be able to give a life to his wife where she doesn't have to go work the same job. If she wants to take a step back, she can. And financially speaking, those are pretty similar metrics. And so we set out goals that both fit our long-term mission. They're very different. However, financially they're very similar. So it allows us to stay motivated for our own personal reasons to go accomplish a bigger task that takes care of both of us in the long term.

Yeah, we had a question yesterday from, uh, one of our close friends and is your partnership even? He had talked to a lot of people where one partner does most of the work, brings most of the value, the other person is just not as involved. And thinking on that, it's like, well, no, I don't think there's anything— I don't think there's anything as a perfectly even partnership. There's no way to do it. But there are days where Cody— I mean, recently where you were out from like 6 AM and you came back at 2 AM the next morning on a trip when I had plans with my wife. So it's like I couldn't do it. Cody put in like this 18, 19-hour workday. It's insane. And I can't keep up with that on those days. There's days where I just have accounting projects that are awful and I don't know anything about it, or I have to design a new software thing where it's just, it's a pain and it takes forever. And Cody gets to hang out with my clients doing the sales stuff that I want to be doing. So it's like, while it's not even, and sometimes Cody's working way harder and sometimes I'm working on way more painful tasks, we're both moving each other forward. There's no point where I don't feel that my partner's not pushing us forward, and hopefully Cody never feels that I'm trying to hold us back. Like, oh, everything I'm doing is trying to push that ball down the field. We're both playing really, really hard. So while it's never going to be perfectly even, the effort should be roughly matched, and I, I see that in this partnership, and that's what you should look for. Otherwise, you're going to start having resentment or other issues in your partnership. If one person is just driving forward and the other person doesn't have the same drive, that's where you get really stuck and that's where they start to fall apart.

Yeah. And the last piece of that is before you just dive in and start going and buying a whole bunch of stuff, it looks like Christian and I went pretty quickly and we did. But before we jumped into a partnership, I helped Christian buy a property on his own. I resonated with him on what he was doing. I already knew why he was doing what he was doing. And we had the same metrics for looking at real estate. He bought a duplex by himself, and then we connected and I helped him buy another duplex by himself. It was a renovation project. It was out of his comfort zone, but he showed me a commitment because he bought 3 hours from where he lived based on trust because I was right there. And we had just met months before that. So I saw a level of commitment from him prior to us actually going in and partnering on a deal. If there's a way for you to test that level of commitment with someone before you jump in, I highly recommend that because you get to see what people are willing to do to further their goals. And if your goals are aligned, that can mean help further your goals as well.

And the last thing is like, you both have personal goals that should be moving mostly in the same direction. We're perfectly aligned on our company goals and the vision for where we want to go. Our goals as an organization is we want to build something just so well-built, big and ridiculous, where people look at us and go, how the heck did these two do that? So that we can show other people how we did that and help other people break out of the 9 to 5, retire their moms, retire their wives, and reach their personal goals. And that's something that we're both very passionate about. So as a company, we're moving the same direction. As individuals, we're moving in a similar direction. As partners, we have similar drive. These are the things you want to look for if you want to have a successful partnership. At least that's what we found. Caveat: we're in year 1. We're going to update you in year 2 and 3 and 4 and 20.

You guys can follow along in real time. You're seeing everything that's happening. We had a truck drive through our building, you saw it the next day. You will see everything that's going on, and if this gets derailed, then we get to look back at this and laugh at our current selves and future Cody. I hope that doesn't happen, but hey, it may. So you guys get to watch everything real time. If you guys want to keep following this journey, you should subscribe to the channel. And if you have questions or comments, put them in the comment section below so that we can get those addressed. And we will see you guys next time.