Enhanced Transcribe:
This is just a very quick message on the subject of growth.
Particularly the subject of are you growing and is your partner growing.
Someone raised the question about business partners?
Can one person be growing faster than the other?
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and is it possible that two people can grow apart because one person might be growing emotionally, they’re learning, studying, reading they’re developing their personal development and the other one isn’t, can they grow apart?
100% yes.
I’ve witnessed it and I’ve seen it in so many couples I’ve worked with and it’s not that either person is bad by any means, it is purely that when they met they had a different set of needs and a different attractive force.
The question was relating to business and do business partners outgrow each other?
The answer again is yes, not always, but depending on the relationship and the type of business. You can have a business which is a widget business, service business, construction business, property business and you focus on getting results.
There’s no necessarily need for emotional or personal spiritual growth between two partners. If the focus is on the business.
What happens if one of the business partners has aspirations for a greater level of growth in the business?
What if one of the business partners wants to expand the business to another level has a more philosophical approach to this where they want the business to grow to a point where they can give beyond themselves and give to charity, for example.
What if one partner wants to have a massive business and one wants the business to get by?
Now you’ve got a shift happening.
You’ve gone from a very successful business to one person wanting to expand and that expansion is difficult. When I’m working with people who are having challenging relationships as well two circles, a small circle represents one person who is not growing, a larger circle represents somebody who is growing.
It might be that when you first meet both like this, and then this A decides they want to grow and expand. That growth and expansion comes from seminars, it comes from attending meetings and being around really personally developed people. You’re growing and emotionally developing and here’s a challenge.
There is a point where, as A continues to grow B becomes challenged by that and in business partnerships that’s unhealthy because if you and your business partner are evolving at a different level and your main business partner you’ve been with for years decided to stay happy to do what they are doing, keep the status quo, and you’re like we can do this and you start talking to other people in that mindset.
You will be attracted to you will be drawn to the people around you that are evolving at a different level, and you’ll find a split happening in that business partnership. In the same way a split could happen in a relationship, so if at this moment in time you’re aware of that, you’re noticing it is a good time to have a conversation.
I would say if you don’t know what signs to look for, if you feel frustrated with the other person because they keep going off, learning new stuff and expanding you might be the person here deciding not to grow.
There’s nothing wrong with that and this is not a criticism observation it’s just an observation.
I think personally every human being has a desire to grow and wants to grow, but not everyone actually does it. If you’re observing your business partner doing it, my statement to you is have a conversation pretty quickly, because you might find they might fall in love with other people’s business ideas and be pulled away from your business, which doesn’t serve your business or yourself either.
Equally, you might want to say to them, I don’t want to go where you’re going, we need to sit down and find out can we carry on running our business the way we are and you still pursue those passions, or do we need to sever the relationship in a healthy way, break up, separate, divorce, financial business level and go in separate directions.
If you don’t have a healthy conversation now you will have an unhealthy conversation at some point in the future and that’s where I get involved and end up coaching people to try and deal with that retrospectively and that’s not a good place to be.
When I’m sitting down with someone who is looking to start a business the first question I ask is are your values aligned?
Your vision aligned and do you want the same things?
Most people go yeah we want this. But beyond that first six to 12 months what about six years, 10 years from now? We’ll worry about that later.
The trouble is if you set the business up and you start it and now, two years down the line one person is doing this and one wants to to stay still, you’ve got problems.
So look for signs and from your perspective, you’re not growing, you’ll be frustrated as the other person’s going out.
If you’re the person growing you will be frustrated because they’re not interested in trying new ideas, they’re not studying other concepts and not looking to take on coaches or mentors, seminars, and attend things like that, and they generally head down focus on the functionality of the business as opposed to the growth of you as an individual and the business and what’s the next level for us?
What’s the vision for this business?
Be mindful of it.
On a business level find out if your top three to five values are pretty much aligned.
If you and your business partner have pretty different values and the only thing in common is your desire to be successful in the business and make money, that may not be enough to keep the business together over the next five to 10 years.
As a rule of thumb from my experience but don’t take that as gospel it’s what I’ve seen in other people.
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