No matter what your experience level as a real estate investor may be, you’ve no doubt heard about the business partnership benefits that can be had when bringing somebody in to your team.
From an expanded network to an ability to split costs, a real estate business partnership can offer many bottom-line, dollars-and cents advantages that can take your investor business to the next level.
But too often many investors overlook some of the more intangible benefits of business partnerships, assets that — though they can’t always be seen on an excel sheet — can help you tap into your entrepreneurial potential (not to mention help you grow as a person).
Here are four (often overlooked) business partnership benefits that can help energize your business and boost your bottom line.
4 Unexpected Business Partnership Benefits
1. Accountability
There’s a reason why Linda Galindo, author of The 85% solution: How Personal Accountability Guarantees Success, calls “accountability partners the entrepreneur’s secret weapon for quick growth.” As she recounted to Entrepreneur magazine, working with a business partner will “hold you accountable for action and keep you on track to help you move your business forward.”
The same principle applies to less business-focused pursuits, such as implementing a new fitness regimen. A recent study found participants who worked out with a partner exercised 200 percent longer than those who worked out alone. And a Stanford University study found simply receiving a weekly check-in phone call increased exercise participation 78 percent.
Scientists refer to this as The Köhler Effect, a strong internal desire to “not be the weakest link of any group.” And while financial incentives can be effective, many researchers believe the strongest internal motivators we have are the fear of being seen as dead weight in a group.
And though as real estate investors we may not be able to pronounce The Köhler Effect, we can certainly use it — and business partnerships — to help propel our venture to a level that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
2. Creativity
Being able to come up with creative solutions to business problems — whether it be creating the perfect direct mail marketing piece or coming up with an ideal negotiating pitch — is a vitally-important trait for real estate entrepreneurs.
Being creative doesn’t require isolating yourself from the world and taking up residence in a remote cabin in the woods. In fact, as filmmaker and TED speaker Kirby Ferguson put it, “Your creativity comes from without, not within.” It’s collaboration with others, bouncing ideas off other people, that help you come up with unique solutions to business obstacles that you couldn’t see before.
In fact, many successful real estate partnerships schedule dedicated periods of creative brainstorming, and feel a large portion of their success stems from strategies borne out of these sessions.
So before you head to that hermit cave in the hinterlands, realize you might just have all the ingredients for a creative solution to your real estate business challenges much closer to home.
3. Higher Standards
Perhaps one of the simplest, though most impactful, business partnership benefits is that of having “two pairs of eyes” look over every area of your business. From marketing copy to landing page design, from PPC ad verbiage to bandit sign fonts, there isn’t any area of your business that can’t be helped by having two separate individuals look it over, and ensure everything is as good as it can be.
Now this does require each member of a real estate business partnership have a thick skin and be able to take (some) criticism. It also means each partner should respect the other partner’s point of view, and be focused more on helping the partnerships grow — and less energy on being right.
The real benefit to having this dual-look at each area of your business is you’ll be able to clean up any overlooked (and under-performing) areas of you business that aren’t operating properly. Some business experts call this “throwing out the leftovers,” in which you look over every area of the business (anew) and find out what should be kept…and what should be put in the compost pile. And it’s possible that all your business needs is a bit of fridge cleaning with your new partner.
4. Minimizing Your Weaknesses
This may come as a shock, but you are not awesome and amazing at every thing you do. Savvy entrepreneurs know the key to success is not trying to be amazing at every aspect of business, but figuring out what your biggest strengths are — and how those strengths can help contribute to the business — then find other people (with different strengths) to fill in the gaps.
Setting up a real estate business partnership, with someone who has a different set of strengths than you is the perfect way to ensure that all fundamental areas of your business are covered.
Sara Blakely, founder and CEO of Spanxx, calls this “hiring your weakness.” And it’s a way to create a more well-rounded and successful business, by making sure everybody on-board is utilizing their strengths — and minimizing the amount of time in areas they aren’t very good at.
What you want to avoid is hiring someone with the same set of strengths or personality traits as you. Though this can be tempting, it doesn’t usually lead to business breakthroughs.
From “Me” to “We”
It can be easy as a real estate investor — when knee-deep in excel spreadsheets and profit statements — to overlook some of the more soft-skill business partnerships benefits available to you.
But as famed writer and literary critic Edmund Wilson once said: “No two people ever read the same book.” Same goes for your business. There are numerous ways your real estate business could reach success, and some might come from people you haven’t met yet.
As an investor, starting a real estate team will connect you with complementary skill sets, knowledge and resources. By opening yourself up to the potential of business partnerships you might not just find a valuable business ally — and important accountability partner — but someone who can help you with the many ups-and-downs of the real estate business life.
