Reflections

A big mistake business partners can make during their first meeting is trying to accomplish too much in what is just the first of many planning meetings. So what should you try to get done in your first meeting?

1. Discuss what each of the business partners has to offer, what unique skills or experience do they bring to the table?
2. Do these unique skills come together in such a way that you can offer something useful and special to offer?
3. Brainstorm to bring out possible business ideas. Keep your minds open!
4. List some areas for further research and call it a day.

Each of you has unique skills and experience

Each person in this venture brings unique skills and experience to the table. Even if you are twins who have worked side-by-side all of your lives, you have different ways of thinking about things and of approaching problems (maybe not in the case of twins who are attached at the hip, so if this is your situation, you may want to find another business partner). So one of the most important things to do in this first meeting is for each partner to discuss what skills they can bring to the team. This is not an exercise in gloating, rather it leads to the next discussion point.

Once each member of the newly formed team has aired their experience, and maybe even skills they are interested in developing further with this experience, it is time to take the list of skills on offer and try to mix them in a way that will offer something unique to the world. Your team may not be interested in creating something groundbreaking, rather you may simply come up with a better way to mix existing products or services in such a way that adds value for your customers. The key here is to look for a combination of your skills, ideas, and interests; when brought together these combination may lead you to something that’s vitally useful to your customers. Of course, if you have some groundbreaking idea that you want to press, move on to the next steps! But don’t feel like you have to have groundbreaking ideas to form a successful business.

One great way to develop a list of possible combinations of these skills, ideas, and interests is to brainstorm. Ideally, brainstorming should occur at a separate time and maybe even a separate place, so that the ideas flow and you are not constrained by what may have been more constrained idea-generation up to this point. However, assuming you don’t have a great deal of time to spend getting things off the ground, it would probably be nearly as effective for you to just spend 5 minutes thinking of the possible ways you can bring your differences together to form a new business. Your goal should be to have at least 3 different ideas, even if they are variations on the same theme. This will give you something to hone as you move into further research, rather than making you feel like you have only one option available to you.

The last step in your first meeting is to look at all that you have discussed and determine which areas require more research. You will certainly want to look into competitors and analyze how what they offer is different from what you are considering offering. You will probably also want to learn more about the potential customers for your product or service. Make a list of the different areas requiring more research, distribute the work among the different partners, and call it a day!

Tags: Small Business //