Top 6 Reasons We Can’t Be Business Partners

I get asked frequently to help others on business projects. In recent years, I have started declining most offers. Although I have not learned the qualities of a good business partner, I have isolated a few qualities of poor ones.

1. Failure To Respect My Time – If you are frequently late to meetings or scheduled phone calls, you do not respect my time. If you do not respect my time, you do not respect me. We can’t be partners.
2. Unresponsive to Email – Email is my chosen form of communication. When you don’t respond to me, I assume you have better things to do. I’m placing more value in the partnership than you. We can’t be partners.
3. Incomprehensible in Email – See The Email Rant. Email isn’t hard. If you haven’t figured it out by now, we can’t be partners.
4. Telling Me What I “Should Do” – There is a local coffee guy who continually tells me what I should be doing with my websites. He doesn’t know 10% of what I know about websites. He is transparent in his desire to manipulate me for his interests. If you are quick to tell me what I should do, we can’t be partners.
5. Always Busy – I have found the people who most often say they are busy are extremely poor at time management. The truly busy don’t sit around telling the world how busy they are. If you are frequently saying you are busy, we can’t be partners.
6. Social Networking Parasite – I’ll post further on this topic later, but I have found those that spend the most time social networking are empty suits. No substance. We can’t be partners.

One day I will figure out what a good business partner looks like. Until then, I am perfectly content doing things on my own.

Photo by Martin Abegglen