Tools and services
Tools and services for co-owners: question lists for a partner, tension diagnostics, the Partner Journey Map, a profiler check, the partnership session and consultations. Also notes on how the author works with clients, which clients get turned down, and how AI is changing attitudes to expert work.
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What should five people who buy one Ferrari together agree on?
The author lists nine points: usage schedule and date clashes, servicing, costs, liability for damage, a reserve fund, a partner's exit, a right of first buyout, and death or incapacity. The exit scenario is the one most often forgotten, and conflicts start there.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: A partner's exit from the business · Scenario planning: failure, windfall, a partner dropping out · The author's own partnerships · Tools and services
Why does AI make clients undervalue other people's work?
Without experience in the subject and with constant claims that AI does everything in two minutes, others' work seems worthless and redoing it seems free. The author's example: a client rejected a 16-page partnership proposal citing ChatGPT, and he ended the collaboration.
Original: LinkedIn
Which 20 questions should you ask a partner before you start?
A list of 20 questions that show how a partner thinks, what they expect and want, and whether you match on values, goals and scale. For when the agreements at the start turned out shallow.
Original: Telegram
Where does the real value of a partnership session lie?
In the mental energy the agreements give back to the partners' business. While roles, money, power and rules remain unsettled, the brain keeps those questions running in the background, like peripheral vision in an optical illusion, and spends attention on them.
Topics: Partnership agreement · Partnership session · Tools and services
Why does the consultant first try to talk people out of partnership?
For the author partnership is a last resort, so he first checks whether a partnership session is needed at all and explains the difficulty, the work of managing the relationship and the risks. In about 20% of cases the partnership is not formed or ends after working with him.
Topics: Choosing a business partner · The author's own partnerships · Tools and services
How can partners catch tension in time?
The question is not whether there are problems (there always are) but how significant and sensitive they are for you: some argue and work on the next day, others store grievances for years. A regular check-up helps catch the moment before repair becomes too hard.
Topics: Tools and services
What sets the ceiling of a partnership: the contract or the partners' skills?
The skills: a partnership cannot rise above the lowest level of partnership professionalism among its key partners. The four-level scale runs from intuitive to systemic; a signed agreement does not make a partnership systemic, it only amplifies what partners can already do.
Topics: Conscious partnership · Partnership agreement · Tools and services
Why have a future partner profiled before the deal?
A partnership collapses not because someone cheated someone but because nobody worked out who was sitting across the table. A profiler shows behaviour under pressure and over money; a partnership session then fixes obligations, shares and rules before signing.
Topics: Choosing a business partner · The author's own partnerships · Tools and services
When is it right to deliberately turn down a client who haggles?
When the client demands the same work faster: haggling builds inflated expectations, and agreeing to a shorter term can cost more than the fee, in reputation and negative feedback. The author recalls the saying that nine women cannot bear a child in a month.
Topics: Tools and services
When is a proposed partnership worth walking away from?
When shares are set with no calculation rule, an investor making the full financial contribution gets the same as the producer, and experts lose control of their IP with no way to revisit terms. That is what one draft agreement on an info product looked like.
How do you explain what you do so that people remember it?
Instead of "I work with business partnerships" the author says: I help co-owners reach agreement before the big problems start. He then names the steps: interviews, a partnership session, roles and decision rules, a partnership agreement.
Original: LinkedIn
Which three entrepreneurial styles does a strong partnership need?
Gallup's Builder Profile 10 names three styles, Activation, Relational and Strategic; an ideal partnership needs all of them. Two strategists never reach execution, two activators give motion without system, and relational types alone give agreements but nothing built.
Topics: Choosing a business partner · Partnership session · Tools and services
Why do co-owned businesses run without a partnership agreement?
The author names four types: the cunning (the business is registered to them), the overconfident (“they won't drop me, I'm indispensable”), the naive (“they're my friends”) and the lazy-inexperienced (“too complicated”). With no agreement, you are one of them.
Topics: Tools and services · Why partners avoid signing an agreement
Why does a paid consultation work better than a free one?
In the author's experience, the same words for big money become an action plan, while free ones go in one ear and out the other. Payment creates an obligation to listen, implement and act, and the more a client pays, the more they value what they get.
Topics: Tools and services
Why should a partnership session not be measured in hours?
The author dropped hourly billing and sells a solution: a session lasts as long as it takes to reach a partnership agreement the parties are ready to sign. Before it come individual interviews and a question order designed for that specific team.
Topics: Partnership session · Tools and services
Why does the author not reschedule after a client's no-show?
In 90% of cases he does not hold the meeting again: a no-show usually means no pressing need, disorganisation, or neglect of a chance to warn of changed plans. Those who did not warn but ask for a new meeting (about 10%) get one only if they pay for it.
Topics: Tools and services
At what stage is it still not too late for partners to agree?
Three levels: "we trust each other" (the best time to agree), "something went wrong" (still not too late, but most postpone) and "sort out this chaos" (mediators and courts needed). Those who settle it at level one never reach level three.
Topics: Partnership session · Tools and services · Why partners avoid signing an agreement
How can a hired executive win an equity stake in a business?
On the eve of a final interview with the owner, a CEO candidate used a session to build a negotiation strategy: an owner profile, a self-portrait, matching and risk zones, and answers on stake, guarantees and KPIs. He aimed for 50% and received 10%.
Topics: The author's own partnerships · Tools and services · Turning a manager into a partner
Do you need a partner in order to finally start your own business?
No: a client wanted a partner to structure his time and was ready to give 50% of a business projected to earn 700-800 thousand euros a year. After advice to hire an employee on KPIs he stayed sole owner and kept 350 thousand euros.
Topics: Choosing a business partner · The author's own partnerships · Tools and services · Why people go into partnership
Why draw up an ideal partner profile before starting a business?
95% of entrepreneurs enter a partnership through friendship, family or chance contacts; only 5% use the Ideal Partner Profile framework. It helps assess one's own resources soberly and see what a partner must compensate; a 60-question questionnaire goes with it.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Choosing a business partner · Ideas from adjacent fields · Tools and services
What makes a consulting session productive?
A prepared client: the author asked in advance for a case description and a brief, and the detailed write-up made it possible to go deeper into the nuances and do more than planned. A thank-you note for feedback on that work.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Tools and services
How do you make any partnership of yours effective?
A short lead-in to an instruction document on making a partnership work; the steps themselves are not in the text and are in the attached file.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Tools and services
How can a partnership avoid collapse when shares are equal?
The Agile Partnership model ties shares to results: define each person's contribution, set measurable goals, issue conditional shares and allocate them on outcomes. That brings transparency, objectivity and flexibility if someone fails to deliver.
Original: LinkedIn
What do partners in post-Soviet countries agree on?
Most often shares and profit (36%), roles (32%) and strategy (22%), and only 27% of partnerships get through their life cycle without major conflicts. For agreeing on their own, the author compiled 20 questions in four groups.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Conflicts between partners · Conscious partnership · Equity split between partners · Partnership session · Tools and services
Why do people really enter a partnership?
Beyond economics the author names four motives: a need for stimulation, for structuring time, for closeness, and nostalgia. When partners play different games conflict is bound to follow, so each should recognise their own motive and say it aloud.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Ideas from adjacent fields · Tools and services · Why people go into partnership
Why do broken expectations and surprise breed partner conflicts?
Conflict builds when expectations are broken and news arrives suddenly. In a nightclub case, a co-owner in charge of a delayed renovation announces a holiday three days ahead, and both sides have a logic of their own; a session and an agreement defused it.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Disappointment in a partnership · Partnership session · Tools and services
Why doesn't an equal split of shares between co-founders work?
The author holds that 99% of co-founders split shares equally and get it wrong, because an equal split follows no rule. Each brings three kinds of capital, human, economic and social, and weighs them differently, so shares have to be calculated.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Equity split between partners · Tools and services · Trust between partners
What do co-founders need to agree on before they start?
The author prepared a 16-page partnership agreement template with 18 sections: roles, equity split, vesting, IP, compensation, exit, death or incapacity, disputes, governing law. His starting point is that co-founders rarely know what to discuss.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Equity split between partners · Partnership agreement · Tools and services
Why do partners have no written agreements, and what does it cost them?
In 90% of cases a partnership rests on trust with nothing in writing: no split of responsibility or losses, no exit scenario, no rules for bad faith, no dispute mechanism. The author offers six steps and a step-by-step Partner Journey Map.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Conscious partnership · Partnership session · Tools and services
How can a two-partner exit dispute be settled in one evening?
The author's mediation terms: three separate rooms, no time limit, the parties' usual comfort, no alcohol, unlimited food. After interviews and a joint session, the parties wrote out by hand, at 1 a.m., an agreement with the sum, payment schedule and deferred terms.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: A partner's exit from the business · Conflicts between partners · Tools and services
What should co-founders do if they dare not set their boundaries?
A short note for co-founders who dare not define their own boundaries or put hard questions to a partner. The author offers help with how to do it.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Tools and services
Why does the author not share real cases and client references?
Work on partner relationships is covered by NDA, so real examples and references cannot be given. A public comment received after cases were worked through live with a group is all the more welcome.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Tools and services
Why is it so hard for partners to start a talk about built-up discontent?
Such a talk may demand hard decisions, time and energy, and in the worst case a split. Delay is costly: clients and staff leave and the team suffers; the author proposes a partnership audit built on one-to-one interviews with each co-owner.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Partnership session · Tools and services
How can a top manager prepare to ask for a stake in the business?
Sooner or later a top manager has to ask for a stake in the business he runs, and an outside view helps. The author prepares the negotiation strategy for such talks and has put together a guide for preparing on your own.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Tools and services · Turning a manager into a partner
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