Ever embarked on a business venture with a friend only to find your goals drifting apart like two ships lost at sea? We've been there, and in this episode, we spill the beans on aligning objectives to avoid that very shipwreck. With a blend of humor and hard-earned wisdom, we share how essential it is to synchronize your vision with your partners from the get-go. You'll discover not just the joy of those "Eureka!" moments when pitching to pals, but also the critical pivot points that can make or break your joint journey.
Dive into the heart of transparent communication and its role in steering the ship of collective ambition. We unravel the complex threads of project management, illuminating how open dialogue about expectations can prevent a mutiny on your entrepreneurial voyage. Reflecting on personal anecdotes, we navigate through the intricacies of hiring, whether for a goliath corporation or a scrappy startup, and how these decisions can chart the course toward success or leave you marooned.
To cap off our odyssey, we cast a lifeline on formalizing business relationships, especially when friends and family are on board. It's a candid look at the storms that can arise from casual agreements and how to batten down the hatches with clear contracts. By sharing tales of choppy waters and the surprise squalls that can hit even the closest of crews, we arm you with the navigational tools needed to sail smoothly into the harbor of a thriving business partnership. Join us for a compelling discussion that's as much about preserving friendships as it is about profits.
Ever embarked on a business venture with a friend only to find your goals drifting apart like two ships lost at sea? We've been there, and in this episode, we spill the beans on aligning objectives to avoid that very shipwreck. With a blend of humor and hard-earned wisdom, we share how essential it is to synchronize your vision with your partners from the get-go. You'll discover not just the joy of those "Eureka!" moments when pitching to pals, but also the critical pivot points that can make or break your joint journey.
Dive into the heart of transparent communication and its role in steering the ship of collective ambition. We unravel the complex threads of project management, illuminating how open dialogue about expectations can prevent a mutiny on your entrepreneurial voyage. Reflecting on personal anecdotes, we navigate through the intricacies of hiring, whether for a goliath corporation or a scrappy startup, and how these decisions can chart the course toward success or leave you marooned.
To cap off our odyssey, we cast a lifeline on formalizing business relationships, especially when friends and family are on board. It's a candid look at the storms that can arise from casual agreements and how to batten down the hatches with clear contracts. By sharing tales of choppy waters and the surprise squalls that can hit even the closest of crews, we arm you with the navigational tools needed to sail smoothly into the harbor of a thriving business partnership. Join us for a compelling discussion that's as much about preserving friendships as it is about profits.
Check us out and send us a message on our instagram, Tik Tok and Youtube platforms @the.needle.movers www.theneedlemovers.xyz
Speaker 1:
I think Goload Lament is an interesting one, because you often start a conversation of starting a business or starting a service or whatever, with a friend, right Like you have that first conversation, say, hey, I had a great idea, I want to do X In our case it was I want to create mock assessment centers and the whole experience of going through a recruitment, and I want to do that for students because I want to give them the best opportunity to succeed in those areas. And you have that conversation with friends, either because, a you're looking for validation or, b you're looking to see whether you could get them on board as well. So, at least if sharing the pain, and in doing so, the problem is that you end up with speaking with people that potentially may not have the same. Let's call it like alignment to your own goals. Like me and you, we always said, oh you know, one day in the future, love to be an entrepreneur, love to have a business, love to leave a legacy behind. And I think we we fall trap of the the good old say whereby you know, just because it applies to me doesn't mean that it applies to everyone else, right, if you and I are interested to marketing, or if you and I read into charge, you and I read, look into books, it doesn't mean that everyone else is going to do the same, and we fall into the trap of thinking, oh, everyone else around us, just because they are friends or just because they hang out with us, they'll have exactly the same mentality as us, and I think that's very wrong, isn't it?
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, I think it's also about well, to put it into a word, it's the motivators behind it, like if you could have the same goal but the vote you're willing to take to get there differ drastically. And that's part of the alignment piece, right? So for us, we're like, yeah, we'd like, love to be entrepreneurs. Someone could have the exact same business idea as us, on same wishes or whatever. Not for them, that might be goal number four, and so the priorities and the motivators behind it are very much differing. And if that's like, if you see that you're, even if you're looking towards the same direction but you're not on the same, like steps, I'd say, like someone's on the slide, someone's on the swing, you need those to marry at some point, or you need to understand what effort or motivator they're about to, they're willing to apply is what I've learned anyway, because, having seen it in, like Charles Young and and realized, come to learn it afterwards, like doing anything with friends. Doing anything with friends, for instance, we do this podcast and invite people to want to, you know, be on an interview, done it. And for us we have a ambition and a reason, right, and you have to basically upsell, you have to make it part of their motivation to want to be on it, which is something you have to consider. And so now, with hindsight, of course, it's much more apparent, but I think back then it was, it was an afterthought, and it only came to like I guess too late, I think, which is the case, and I wouldn't usually say too late, but I'd say because of what happened afterwards, like it's clearly too late. If it happened earlier, then I think one thing about an output of goal alignment is that you get, you can at least agree what you want out of it, and then it's a bit more beneficial to everyone, because if someone's really gone like hey, I want to do a marathon next year, and another person's like I don't mind doing a marathon next year, this year even, and you're trying to run together and you find out, hey, for that person, one person who's like got it in their ambitions to make sure it happens this year, and the other reason is nice to have, but they're not going to put in the same energy. Both of them are unhappy ones, like why aren't you running as fast as the others? Like, why are you running so fast? And it's not even marrying up? Because if they'd come to that agreement earlier on, then they'd both be like it's cool, you just run at your pace, I'll run at my pace. We're both aiming towards you know different times, different strategies, and I think that's where people can fall short.
Speaker 1:
I like the analogy, the analogy of the marathon, not because I'm a runner, but I like it because I think it sets the right, the right example, and I think that's what happened to us in some way right. Like you and I, we had an idea of doing this and running it, although we were doing things all wrong, as we discussed in the last three episodes. However, I think then the people that we decided to join forces with, they perhaps didn't have the same vision around wanting to be entrepreneur or wanting to be business owner. I think for them, it was more of a oh, this is a nice, interesting project that we can run. It's a project and I think also, I liked what? That it wasn't even a priority for us, for me and you, because we were just coming out of uni, we were very much aligned to the idea of earning money as opposed to like bleeding money from the back account of the students you should do, and I think it's fair to say that you know as starting for you and I, yes, we liked getting paid. So that means that if someone turned around to us and said, hey, drop everything that you're doing today and put all your efforts into the business that you have development and that's the only way to move forward. We probably would have turned around and say you know, that's not possible. We got bills to pay, because that's true, ultimately right. You got car, you got rent to pay, etc. Etc. So we are already misaligned, but at least we want to be entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, sorry, and the people that we joined up with. They want to be involved, but they want to be involved as a project. It's almost like if you think about racing matrix you got the responsible, the accountable, the involved and the what's the last one.
Speaker 2:
It's informed and consulted.
Speaker 1:
I think they want to be consulted and informed in a way, and perhaps they didn't want that full responsibility and accountability. And I think it's quite interesting to spot that at the beginning, because then it kind of allows, it could have allowed us to perhaps have different ways of going about their involvement, because then what happens in my opinion anyway and you know, stop me because I'm aware that I'm talking a lot, but I think what happened is that we had different expectations. Because we had different expectations, we probably ended up planning too much work or we ended up demanding too much, and with that demand, then what happened is that they became disengaged or we became disengaged and as a consequence of that, things went per-shaped.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's pulled push or push pull it was, and it's resource alignment. If any project, if I take any staff or anyone now the question I'm asked is how many hours do you think they'll need to work on said things? We didn't do that. We were just like all hours outside of our hours, just get stuff done. And so for us it's very because we've got a different motivator. It was, yeah, like make money, we've got things to do, but we will also do this and it's got this much urgency, like top tier urgency, whereas when others are like it's a nice project or it's a consulting thing, it's not got the same priority or urgency. And also we haven't already discussed how many hours. So therefore, the expectation from our side is all of them and their side is as much as they feel good to do. But then there's also the additional pressure when they're seeing some people run full sprint speed, like, I say, marathon analogy, and they're like what's going on? I just wanted to put so-and-such hours in and I think for us, in this circumstance, we had to witness it ongoing before addressing it, which is backwards. You really want to address it. Like with any project I've done from the future after that, it's always been hey, this is the expectation, this is the end goal, this is what we're working to, this is the sections, milestones, whatever. Are we all fine with this or do we want to change? And it's doing those check-ins as well. And I think it only came after recognizing there was a huge discrepancy and it had already built some resentment or just like friction and I wouldn't say negative friction between people. It was just between the project and we'll call it, or the company and what we're doing. I think it was after the fact it was very reactive to come and say what do you actually want, what goal would you actually like? And to hold that conversation in a way that's not malice, not threatening as well. That was a big learning from my side as well, I'd say for sure.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, no, you're right. It's a bit like when you hire a company. Right, if you're a big company, it doesn't really matter who you hire in, because you've got enough resources of picking up the slack and having the learning curve, learning expectations and even managing out if necessary. But then, when it comes to a very, very small company, like maybe even up to 50 employees or so, it becomes super critical to make sure that who you hire in is aligned to the business goals and aligned to what you're trying to achieve. And I think, as, having had experience only working in a bigger corporation or bigger environment, we kind of thought any hands are good hands. It doesn't really matter if people are aligned with the idea of building and leaving a legacy. Right, that's what I'm saying. Now that I look at it retrospectively, it would have made a little sense of actually even asking the question and tackling that first, because if what they wanted to do was a career which there's nothing wrong with it then they could have taken a different role, they could have had different expectations, but at the very least it would have allowed us to move in a direction that fit with us, as opposed to a direction that fits everyone and the group of everyone isn't actually fully interested in the entrepreneurial path, so it's an interesting concept and certainly something that I have massively, massively missed way back then.
Speaker 2:
I think it was the apparent stagnation that brought it to my attention and I'll never forget the conversation because, more than anything, it felt like very much learning experience at that time. Now I don't think you were there, but I'd invited them both rounds to work on this thing because it stagnated. But I don't think it was. I'm not sure necessarily if it was to work on it or just to meet up, but part of it, of course. If you have at least two or three of us, if any of us are in the room and we're working on a big project together, it comes up. I remember being there and I asked the question and it was like a light bulb went on and I was like what do you actually want to do? What's your plan? And they both separately but jointly in ways, had said, oh, we just like career is our jobs and we're working towards that and this is just a side project thing that's happening. And I was like, oh, because that realization meant I could have been getting way more out of you. If we had this information in hindsight, then we could have given you parts and you'd have got those smacked them out, the bags. It's not that you're looking capable, it's just that the amount that you want to work on is a smaller bite size and you would have killed those bite sizes. Instead, we give you the entire pie and say, eat this whole thing. And it's like, hey, it's not the diet I'm trying to eat, so then I won't eat any of it because the requirement is to eat the whole thing. And that was like I'll never forget, just being like, ah, if I'd known that then we don't have to do that. You know what I mean? It's so optional for you to have to do the entire thing. It's so optional for you to have to do this big piece, because what's happened from us not having that conversation is nothing's happened. We've really slowed to a stall. And that's because, like I mentioned earlier, the expectations from my side and outside might be too high and from your side it feels too overwhelming and chasing your tail. And then also on our side too, of course, if you see other people aren't working, it gives you inspiration not to be like, if they're not going to do it, what's the point in me doing it? And it's a cycle that just needs communication to kind of better heal or better progress. You and I think from that communication. It's something that stood out to me to be like oh, that's the motivation, that's something I wish I'd asked and it was a great learning experience. There's a story I might have told before. It's come to my mind recently from live events, but it's just. I always think of it and I've probably mentioned it on a podcast before and I wish I'd done this then. So in like year seven of secondary school high school for anyone from abroad we went on this trip, a place called Westwood Ho, and we had to build these rafts. So it was like logs and barrels that you float and you're supposed to build them first. Then you go around this course on water on some point in the lake or something and you're supposed to go around some posts and come back. Now we got given this assignment and we just got straight to work on it, and if you've been in any company, you've probably had some form of workshop where they give you assignments and get you to work on it and the timeframe always makes it tight. You don't figure out everyone's motivations. Now I couldn't, and still can't my hands up, can't swim, but I couldn't swim and so we built the raft. We're going and remember it's a race. We're racing other people. We get out middle of the water, get past one like pole or whatever sign we've got to get back. And I see, I look back and I see my classmate or whatever someone who's on this raft. There's four of us, because it's like a big square and we're each on four barrels each and they're just frantically laughing while they're trying to untie one of the barrels so that the raft will just sink. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the game changer. So now I'm like what? How have I got a saboteur on the boat? And it's like we have to make it back before he does it. And I'm probably like wait, I can't swim. I've got, of course, the what's that thing there, the life jacket. Yeah, yeah, life jacket on, but still I was just like what the hell? So you're trying to get back before he does this? Now, if perchance, I'd figured out their motivations prior to engaging in this team activity, I probably wouldn't even have gone out in the water. This man has ambitions to destroy the ship and they I'll never forget how happy they seem like yeah, we're going to destroy everything.
Speaker 1:
I think your classmate may have been a visionary, you know. So there is this story from, I think, the 1500s, about this Spanish conquistador landing onto South America, and essentially what happened is, you know, landing with three boats, had a fuller mud up, but the indigenous people were encountering. They were very adamant that they didn't want any Spaniards on their land. So what the captain decided to do was to burn the boats, because that gave no opportunity to retreat to their men, and so that meant that they fought as if their life depended on it, and the life did depend on it.
Speaker 2:
So we got the question.
Speaker 1:
I reckon, fast forward like 500 years. I think your classmate was a visionary and he decided you know, let me burn my boat, or, in this case, let me untie the cables and let's try to see how fast we can complete this course.
Speaker 2:
I love that by removing one and only having free extreme speed, we didn't win. It didn't help. If that was their ambitions, I'd never thought that from that perspective, but if that was their ambitions and their visionary coolers, to them from my perspective and to this day, it seemed very much like they are more like an anarchist and they wanted to watch the world burn and the people of the ship were part of that world that needed to burn. I actually don't remember my ever compadres who were on it and how they responded Like because you know, once you see someone they might have joined in like oh, I didn't know it was sabotage day, forget this whole trip. And you know, there's always people who are like, oh, this doesn't matter to me, and because it's not their own passion, it's not that. Like, that's what I mean by goal alignment, but if you think about it, it doesn't matter to them. Then that whole circumstance, that framing of that scenario, is totally different. Like if someone had mentioned in the briefing hey, by the way, two of your teammates are going to try and sabotage. Then you do things differently, triple the knots on that side. Whatever, if you still have to get that goal done, but without the alignment to determine if they are a revolutionary or a visionary, an anarchist or just someone who just wants to have fun, it doesn't matter if you can figure that out in advance. And the best thing about with companies is you get to at least ask the question, like that was a time framed, like how would I? 1112 assignment, but now, as an adult taking that lesson, and like, oh, what would you like to do? And someone could be like my dream goal is to just bankrupt a company and get paid off the bankruptcy. You know what I mean. And I've been like, ah, that's not for me, but at least you get to ask the question and then work accordingly. I think in a way it's like.
Speaker 1:
It's like building a habit, right. So just like joining a I don't know a group of four that wants to set up a company and wants to build a product, right. There is that initial excitement and motivation. You might jump on the bandwagon, thinking that the excitement is actually enough to keep you going and you know you might be. At the beginning it's really fun. You got all these ideas floating, you got the brainstorming the team. For me it's exciting and it's a little bit like running a marathon. You start and you're very excited about the fact that you're going to be running those 26 miles sometime down in the future, and then the obstacles stop coming your way. You know, one time it rains, one time it's cold, another time you might have food poisoning, maybe you ate too much, and all those obstacles start getting in the way. Similarly, you start realizing that actually you don't really fancy working on this on a Saturday night. You don't really fancy jumping on a call on a Tuesday evening. You probably prefer going out with mates for a dinner instead of meeting them to speak to about a business. And it's about the element of if you're, if your motivations are truly aligned with what you want to achieve so. For example, if you've got a really good motivation as to why you want to run a marathon maybe you're doing it for a charity, maybe you're doing as a personal challenge, you're why is strong then you can build really strong foundations and haps that will actually get you there. If your foundations are not strong, then you will struggle. Similarly in setting up a company. If your foundations are the reason why you want to do it is strong and it's aligned with the other people in the group, then it doesn't really matter or, okay, it does, but you're going to get past the fact that on a Saturday afternoon you're brainstorming and you're doing tasks for setting up this company and you'll see past the element that you can't go out and have a little bit of fun, and it's quite similar in a way, and that recognition of what is the why and making sure that that's aligned with everyone else in the group is quite important. Definitely did not do that. I don't know if you I mean any thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:
No, I didn't do that either, and I think some things you've touched on is the fact that you need mechanisms to check in, because one thing I've noticed in corporate life, say, is the moment someone has a kid or the moment someone buys a house or something, they need money really fast, right, and when they need money really fast, their why? Changes shift somewhat, sometimes not everyone, but sometimes that's the case. And that being the case, you need to check in to be like hey, what do you want to do next? Because you can still adapt that workplace to that person's requirements to make sure it fits both of you. But if you don't do the check-in, then it could just misalign drastically. And the same with this, because at the start the presumption here would be that they didn't want entrepreneurship from the start, but maybe they did Like we never thought that, maybe they did want it. Then they started doing it, saw what it entailed and at some point it pivoted. And when it pivoted, if we'd had mechanisms to check in and say, hey, how's it going, how's the workload? Like, just like re-arranging and checking along the way, things could have been different. But no, we started with One Mindset this is a company that's built this and we continued along that vein, without check-ins, to say, hey, are you still game for One Mindset Like what's your capacity? We only did that conversation and, to be honest, I'm pretty sure it was. It had to have been years, years later. One of them has been there from the start, one joined a bit later, but we had that conversation years down rather than asking and I think it's key, no matter if you're on a team for a project, a business or whatever that check-in to see and I think that's what happens with working goals and stuff like here's what we're putting you, is this still what you were trying to do? And I get given remits to work on, and I'm always asked do you still wanna work on that? Is that still interesting to you? Because it could not be. My ambitions could change, my whole mindset or mentality could shift, and I think that's really key to establish a process that involves just revisiting the whole direction or angle, like in any case.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you're right, and I don't know if you heard this saying in the past. Right, they always I think it is what I heard they always say oh, never start a business or get into business with family, or never get into business with friends. No-transcript. Touching upon what you just said, I think the fundamental issue is not the action or the act of getting in business with family or friends, and what they say is insinuating is that you don't do that because things can go sour. But the reason why I think things go sour is because people will get into business with one another not actually knowing what inspires them or what motivates them to get into that business, so whether even it's the right decision for them, and then what will happen if they're not on the line is that there is misalignment. And because there is misalignment and there is arguments and there is drifts that happen across the two, three, four, individual, whatever many and I think that is what the fundamental is. So in some way the say shouldn't be don't get into business with family, but don't get into business with anyone where you might have a misalignment, and make sure that you check what that alignment is, what is that, why, and whether you can actually have that compatibility moving forward.
Speaker 2:
Fully agree. Like someone who's doing like houses and stuff, and I have a lot of things with friends and family and I've not heard one person who's not been like that's a bit sticky. You need to make sure you protect yourself, and a big push that I get given now here a lot is to make sure you know you have contracts, and this is just things in case, just in case, right. And the what this reminds me of is my family, like my extended family, like my parents, my aunties, uncles, whatever. Sometimes we'll have meetings, family meetings, and I'll be present at these meetings, for instance, when we're visiting or pee, but my grandma who passed away and all these things, and there needs to be meetings to determine what to do next. And I'll be at these meetings and I'll see anarchy going and I'm just like we've all worked in like companies, we all know there's like precedence and stuff that can be sold and if we just utilize them here. But because it's family, because it's emotion, you don't want to bring in the formalization of things that you do at work. They're just like like hey, there's, we all got taught these things. It's not even it's basics by the stage for adults. We've had to go through certain decorum and they just spread out the window, which, of course, I think and I've learned this and I think it's fine about me. Maybe I'm a typical way to sign wrong, but the way I look at things in an analytical approach means that I can see, oh, just like, it's very easy if you do it formally and just had these milestones, whatever, and set in front that is required for a workplace in life, it probably would help some things. Probably, but from what I've experienced and this is why I say it's me is that most people just throw them out the window. And that's where, if you get into business with friends, family, whatever, like we did, we threw it out the window. We might have known, hey, you do these certain processes. I don't personally don't remember knowing so, but still, even with that knowledge, be like, hey, let's do this. You need to find out that you're likewise, because for me, maybe if I start now, I'd want someone who's on that same wavelength, right, who wants to do that same thing, but the moment someone's like I just want to do it by feeling, and they might be successful. Don't get it twisted. There's a lot of artists out there, but they need managers, and managers or the people who are kind of like me is like, yeah, but there's a lot of like ways to go about it to make sure it's done with diligence. And I think that's the key because, even if it's a friend, family, a stranger, a co-founder there's co-found in websites and you find out that, like you don't want to be surprised negatively, let's just say and that's where deciding if you're fine with that, your risk averse or your, because that's where you can find out embezzlement happen and who knows what. And there's too many risky factors that you'd have to consider, whereas if you just take good practices that you might have learned in a whole different project or something and you know that they are applicable here, it could save you in the long run. That's how I look at it.
Speaker 1:
So, in a nutshell, it might be your friend, it might be your partner, it might be your colleagues, but whoever you get into business with, make sure that you've got an alignment between where you want to be and where they want to be, because if there isn't an alignment, then you run the risk of having future problems that can potentially derail the project or the thing that you want to work on.
Speaker 2:
It does sound like Charles Young was a clusterfucker from the movie. But yeah, I fully agree.
Speaker 1:
For us being corporate. It was a great learning opportunity with a shit sandwich I had me your host when I heard Master, joined by my co-host, mark Jason. And, as always, till next time, adios.
