Business Partner blueprint

DOING “ANYTHING” WILL HURT YOUR BUSINESS I’ve been at networking events, talking to diverse suppliers and eventually in the conversation we get to the point where it has become obvious that their “pitches” are not working. Usually they know it and I know it, so then they will say “Look, I will do anything”. I understand that these are good folks with viable businesses who are saying if I can just get my foot in the door, you’ll see that I was worth taking a risk on. The problem with that scenario is that it doesn’t help me as the person trying to find a place for them to do “anything”. For example, imagine that you are trying to participate in the Olympics and you are talking to the person who can get you in an Olympic event and they say, “Well, what’s your event?” And you say “well, I just want to be in the Olympics, I can run anything.” Now imagine that the person to whom you are speaking is handling all the Track and Field events: the 100-meter; the hurdles; the steeplec...

THE PARTNER ECONOMY: THE SINGLE GREATEST OPPORTUNITY AND THREAT TO YOUR BUSINESS A gentleman that I recently met at a conference said something that I found fascinating. He said that “in the old days it was the big that beat the small, but in the current economy it’s the fast that beat the slow”. This guy worked for a large company and he recognized that the old business models weren't really working like they used to. As examples, in earlier years Standard Oil (which is now Exxon Mobil); Rockefeller; Ford; and US Steel owned all the factors of production from beginning to end. They were integrated - they owned everything. They could build everything, and they controlled everything. They controlled the price of every single raw material for input. They controlled the pricing that it took to make everything in the middle. Clearly they controlled the price at which they could sell everything because there wasn't a lot of competition back then, so that was a fantastic bus...