Why Business Partners Are Stupid If You Own An Agency

so this is something that definitely gets on my nerves I see it time and time again so in this video I want to talk about why having a business partner when you're an agency owner is just a dumb dumb idea now I get this a lot with usually it's beginners and I get this question law in the 60s made community or sometimes you know people start with business partners then they come to and you know and start to build a pretty decent agency they come samarium mastermind and sometimes they go quite hard on them on

why it's not a good idea now one sort of arrangement you'll find a long time is you know one business partner says okay I'm gonna do the sales and then other ones like okay I'm gonna do the operations or the service delivery you know and they have this sort of agreement that you know these are gonna be the terms and whatnot so before we actually get into why I believe having a business partner if you're an agency owner is stupid we gotta get to the root cause or the stem of why people want one in

the first place so a long time people will want agency business partners because honestly I feel a lot of time the main reason is just because they're really scared you know starting an agency just like starting any other business in the world it's something that's scary and having someone there at you know as a confidant a friend just someone you can always have there it seems nice conceptually it seems like a nice idea you know someone who's in it together with you you guys have a shared vision of you know building your agency achieving financial

freedom traveling the world building a pretty passive and sustainable business if you set up the operations correctly you know that's your dream that's your vision together and we'll get into why this can kind of crumble a little bit later down the line but you know I'd say that's number one as most people just are kind of lonely number two people think that a business partner will complement their skill set and that them together will go further than them alone and once again we'll kind of squash that idea in just a second here and then lastly

I feel as though some people just think it's kind of cool you know like a lot of people throw out the term oh he's a business partner of mine you know I feel so people like throw out the term like mentor business partner like these kind of like buzzwords they like just throw them out there you know yeah everyone thinks they're an investor for some reason people like to throw out these buzzwords you know I'm mentor my business partner I'm an investor philanthropist you know like people think that these things mean that they're more business

savvy than they actually are so I find that that's usually the third reason why so let's circle back to the first reason which is the fact that most people are just lonely a business partner I will a hundred percent and test the fact that it's cool going into something together where you know if you guys are struggling you guys are struggling together and you can get through that you can push that but you don't need a frickin business partner to help you through that you can have close friends you can have confidence you don't you

know you can have other agency owners that are building their own isolated agencies that have nothing to do with you in a business perspective and you can confide in them when you're having issues you can talk to them be like hey dude call him up be like look if have you had any issues with this you know is this something that you've been struggling I don't mean personally when I first started you know what my best friends and my early mentor Bob like I would call him up you know he didn't have a marketing agency

or anything like that but he had a web development agency I was constantly hitting him up being like hey is this something you've been through hey is this something you've been through what do you usually do when a client says this or acts this way etc etc you can find other people other agency owners or other people in your sphere that you can confide in and be like hey have you experienced this or hey like can you give me feedback on this message that I sent back to a client do you think I was maybe

a bit too direct or maybe a tube a bit too soft you know you can find these advisors these trusted advisors these conference without literally giving away 50% of your business and that kind of brings me to the second point which is business partners you know they're not just like magical fixes I say this you know I use this example quite a lot you know with networking people freaking love to network and think that networking is super super productive by always stopping long look take this with a with a pinch of salt you know I

I don't mean this disrespect for you but like for example with me when I first started and I was just trying to build my business I'm gonna throw this out as a term like you know me as you know me networking as a loser I'm working with another person who had an agency those just doing okay or just starting that's just two losers networking yeah that's not that's not any person bringing any value to each other the best thing for me when I first started would have been just do the work not trying to network

with all these people thinking that all these connections are gonna come back to me and then all these people are gonna serve me yeah they might do and there's this chance that they will you know the thing is networking is great if it's done organically but a lot of people just go out of their way to like provide value to random people or like network or like you know just connect that same time could have been spent on your business on your agency so one thing you need to understand is most of time when business

partners you know kind of lock in and usually I find that business partnerships happen or at least in the agency will happen at the beginning you know because the thing is a business partner trying to team up with me now and funnily enough it's happened a couple times there's been a couple companies out in Germany and then those one out in America or is I think was Canada actually but they want to like literally partner up with me that they want to like form some sort of strategic partnership and I was basically like no like

why would I focus on your or our when I could just focus on my and most successful agency owners will kind of have that same and tie it they won't really be too keen on you know having a business partner or merging two agencies together like most the time that's just kind of like you know veteran or experienced agency owners like they they won't be that dumb to think that that's a good idea so I usually find this with beginners where two beginners will lock in and both of them think that they're gonna help each

other yet they forget the fact that they were both beginners you know I just thought you know this an example I saw was someone who came some of your mastermind so he came in and he was kind of a beginner at sales or beginner intermediate and the other guy was a beginner to intermediate at service delivery which in their case was running Facebook Ads so they came in together now they have to share 50% of everything expenses revenue and profit so they have to share everything and the worst part is for that same 50% you

know this person who came to mastermind for that same 50% he gave to his business partner he could have just gone a high quality contractor who would have been way better than his business partner because once again they both started in it together they were both like okay to intermediary for that same price that same 50% monthly that he was giving him he could have just signed a high-quality contractor on a per client per month basis and it would have just been way better and once again those two people in their free time you know

these two friends there were business partners and actually now have separated and gone separate ways as per my advice these two people they can still confide in each other you know they can still hang out every weekend talk agency world you know talk about what they're doing what's working what's not working but they just don't have to give each other 50% of their if you have a successful you can see then you're gonna be giving 50 percent to your business partner and by the time you know you get it all depends on your tax structure

once again but just for me personally if I had a business partner in my agency you know a 50-50 business partner I'd have to give 50 percent of my profits to my business partner if I had a business partner of my agency and I own a hundred percent of all of my businesses even though they're technically only under one legal entity one legal company if I had a business partner and let's say a 50 percent business partner I would have to give that business partner fifty percent of my profits and then between corporate corporate level

and dividend level which once again it depends what country you in but that's my tax structure between okay at the corporate level and then at the dividend which is kind of like the personal level I wouldn't be giving a another 50 percent to the government so at the time of recording this where my agency is at right now which is $45,000 per month I would have to give twenty two and a half thousand dollars to my business partner and then from the twenty two and a half I have left I'd have to give like another

50 percent to the government so I'd be left with basically nothing net so look if you have a business partner you're gonna make fifty percent to your business partner and you were giving 50 percent to the government I think if there is a scam out there is that that in the education system are basically the two big scans so all I can say is don't play yourself now look you know there are arguments to come in and be like hey yeah but you know a man if you had a business partner you could be doing

you know maybe you could not be doing 45 K maybe you could be doing a hundred K or maybe a hundred fifty K and yes that is also plausible but at the end of the day anything that my business partner could do I can do myself I can learn without having to give them 50 percent and anything in terms of like graphic design or like accounting or like you know running paid traffic there are contractors that are gonna be a hell of a lot cheaper than giving someone else 50% ownership of your company so that

kind of brings me to the last point which is getting into a business partnership like look I think I'm sure later down the line somewhere in my life I will have a business partnership with someone currently I don't and one of the reasons that is is because I know I'm not mature enough to have a business partnership just yet I know you know I was always the type of kid in school I was horrible at school but there were a couple I mean on paper I was horrible at school there was a couple subjects for

example English not English literature or the thing where you actually just studied text and try and like find 50 meetings for what they meant when they just meant what they meant not that thing it was just like English like you know writing like poetry or like text whenever we did English or history you know all my teachers would also want me to work with other people and I'd be like no I'm sorry I'd rather work alone and they'd be like no you have to work with other people and I'm like I'm sorry I'm gonna work

alone I don't want to work with other people and then they get so angry at me and I'd be like look how does this make sense I'm gonna work with this person they're gonna take my answers they're gonna take credit for it how does this help me and then most the time I get sent to the principal's office so look you know I was always like that I will continue to be like that I'm a person you mind I'm an only child it's just me and my you know me and my mom so I know

me personally as a human I don't like to have like real business partnerships I like having my team Aylin I always take responsibility for my team I always put myself at the forefront but I wouldn't want an actual business partnership because here's the thing at the end of day I know me you're on you're on you're on your gear I'm going up and up and up I'm going to the moon here's the issue if you're on your you are going to more masterminds you're reading more books you're meditating you're calming your mind you know you

can look at things you can focus better and then your business partner and I see this time and time and time again your business partner goes oh company profits are going up you know maybe I could just kind of coast now you know and then your business partner goes you know what look I'm sorry you know let's say at a business you know a man I'm sorry like I just realized like to me the most important thing is just to live life and then they just move to Thailand and they just chill and they're like

you know what you meant I'm gonna really work on my work-life balance and that's totally okay they totally have the right to do that any person totally has the right to do that but if I'm busting my ass I'm putting systems in place and I'm doing like all of this and this other person is like putting you know if I'm putting X amount of value and the other person is putting in this amount of value I don't want this person to get the same amount of money as me because that person does not deserve the

same amount of money as me so the thing with business partnerships is it takes extreme extreme self-awareness I have a lot of self-awareness to know that right now if I had a business partnership I would resent that person if that person didn't bring us much value to the table as me and the funny thing is I have never found anyone who can bring more value to the table than me that actually wants a partnership there are people who are way way way better entrepreneurs than me but they don't want to partner with me because they

could just do it themselves and in the same way I don't want to partner with anyone else because I can just do it myself this would be very very different if I was let's just say I was starting and you there that amuses meditation headband that I use like let's just say how I want to start a new piece of wearable tech that help people with their meditative practice I know nothing about manufacturing nothing about engineering just nothing about any of that so in that situation it might be good for me to find a business

partner and go hey look I will make sure that this thing blows up I understand marketing I understand you know like videography like people ask me all the time they're like oh you know do you have fog refer a videographer that travels around the world with you funnily enough now in Bali at the time recording this once again I'm probably way back and learning by the time this goes out but funnily enough I have a videographer here he's not actually in the room right now I'm just doing this all myself back in London or you

know when I'm in like New York or LA or whatever I just literally tell the person who's with me who probably has no video experience at all I like do I do the ISO I do the shutter speed the aperture I set everything up and I'm like hey just like do this or take a photo like this so you know I could partner with someone else and be like hey look I understand photo video editing marketing page like you know I can help us get influencers on board and stuff like that you know I can

really take an amazing product and take it to the world and it's scale this company I can be like I understand operations I understand how to manage teams I understand all of this stuff that you might not understand as an engineer or you know someone who's really good at the manufacturing side but I need a product to take it to that place and then that person you know can help with the product or whatever but this video is specifically for agency owners as I said it is very very easy any side of the agency world

it's very very easy to find someone who can execute on that for you for a much much smaller fee than you giving someone literally 50% of your business so really I wouldn't recommend anyone starting in business you know until you are I would say until you've been in business for 3 years I would not have any sort of business partnership I would not recommend that at all because it takes immense self-awareness and also you need to understand like to me they just imagine this scenario as I said you're moving up you're leveling up and then

your business partner starts to slack a little you still have to give that business partner money every single month or six months or one year you know whenever you release those dividends like you have that business partner owns 50% of your company which brings me that back to my last point which is the awesome thing is I control my company's cash flow entirely you know anything that's a business expense for me you know I'm looking around the room trying to find things let's just say my you know my computer if I want to spend 4,000

pounds on a fully spec MacBook Pro I can do that I don't need to ask anyone if I want to spend a hundred K on a mastermind I don't need to ask anyone if I decide it's worth it for me to fly from one city to the other city in business or maybe even first-class and you know it costs six six thousand pounds roundtrip 10,000 pounds roundtrip and I decide it's worth it because that business venture of that mastermind or whatever I've got going on in that other city that's you know it's worth it for

me to arrive well-rested and in peace I don't to ask anyone and that's the amazing thing when you want a hundred percent of your company you control everything you don't have to ask a business partner where if you have a 50-50 business partnership you need to understand the things that you expense hurts the other person's profits you're gonna have to like ask them and you you know your business partner may be like hey I don't think you need a 4,000 pound Feliz Peck MacBook Pro just get the base 2k and that would just cause so

so much friction for me you don't you know I'm buying all my team members or rings and I'm buying them the fully like Specht out or whatever Kindles if I want to buy all my employees I actually just hired a new person in America so I now have more team members in America than I do you case but you know once I came back to London I was planning on opening up in office at this one it just doesn't make sense but when I opened up in office I was planning on getting every single employee

two thousand pound electric scooters so they can just electric scooter to work and on the side would have grow your agency which is my training business would have grow your agency calm if I have a business partner I have to deliberate it with him bla bla this this is that whereas if I 100 the company I'm just like oh yeah who cares it's 10k spent on electric scooters that's good for company morale that's good for my team members now I don't have to spend money on travel they can just take this electric scooter every single

day you know that's just so much freedom and ownership that comes with owning a hundred percent of your business and I think that's the most important thing is the fact that if you win you win and it's because of you if you lose you lose it's because of you you can hide behind anyone else and you know as you start to get some success with your agency you own you know there's no one that you start to resent because you're like oh like I have to give 50 percent of my to this person and then

you know if I relinquish dividends and also match that with the corporate level if I relinquish dividends and put in my personal account also time you don't lose like 50 percent to taxes if you're doing pretty well so you know there's none of that resentment and once that resentment starts to come about I think that like that can really cause some issues so I've kind of just deviated away from having a business partner ever because as I said I just know I'm not mature enough to have a business partner or these at the time being

I'm sure eventually I will be first of all I don't see a point at all and having a business partner it makes no sense and number two I don't think I'm mature enough I'm still at that stage where I want to win and I want to win alone and if I lose I want to lose alone right granted I have my entire team but I would take responsibility for my entire team no I don't have a business partner I can be like oh you did this you did that and lastly I've seen it with actually

a couple of my clients you know I'm not gonna name any specifics or any names I've seen it with a couple of my clients and just really close business friends where they've had to buy out their business partner and their business is doing well you know we're talking seven multiple seven eight figures a year in revenue and just think about how expensive it would be to buy out your business partner you know these people are having to spend millions to buy out their business partner I mean it's just honestly ridiculous yeah all in all please

especially when you start avoid business partners and you can thank me later so guys hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you in the next one