These days, in order to succeed in start-up small businesses, everyone gets to deal with partners.
These days, nobody does it alone.
It is becoming increasingly unwise to go it alone in the running of any business no matter how small.
Everyone needs customers to be in business.
You also need reliable and dependable vendors to supply you raw materials, information and inventory.
You need mentors, professionals and experts in the field of your chosen business to share your ideas with and to learn from.
You need accountants, legal advisers, financial planners and tax experts to help out along the way.
All these are people whom you must as a matter of utmost importance choose to work with in the course of running your business.
To make these choices, many successful entrepreneurs take many qualities into consideration.
Foremost among these qualities are, 01.
The person must be honest and trustworthy.
This quality is rather obvious.
You need honest partners if you want to remain in business for any appreciable length of time.
Any business founded and run with dishonesty is guaranteed to fail much sooner that later.
02.
The person must not only be reputed in what he does, he must be excellent at it.
You do need a partner because you neither know it all nor have it all.
The person whose assistance will be very beneficial to you and your business is the one who is excellent in his profession and is reputed at it.
That is the kind of person you must work with.
03.
The person must be more valuable to your business than what you pay for his services.
Apart form professional services, many partners are very good at making efforts to see you succeed than just charging you fees to do a service for you.
That is one quality a partner must have that can stand him out from all others no matter how good the others are in their professions.
It is that kind of partner you need.
04.
The person must be reliable and dependable.
You do not need anyone as a partner whom you can not rely on to come to your aid when needed.
Dependability breeds trust and confidence, qualities greatly needed to succeed in business.
05.
The person must be easily accessible.
Doing business with anyone you can not reach easily is bad for your business.
That is the main reason why you need partners that are not only supportive to your business, you can reach them very easily whenever you want to.
Inaccessible partners are not good partners to do business with.
06.
The person must be enjoyable to work with.
You can not afford to do business with anyone whose company you do not enjoy.
If you are comfortable in the company of some people, they are the kind of people whom you can confide in and expect them to assist you with honest and reliable advice that can help your business.
Lack of trust breeds suspicion.
Suspicion makes many people uncomfortable in company of others.
That is not good for business.
On a final note, you as an entrepreneur must exhibit the qualities you want to see in others.
If you are consistent, honest, cooperative and trustworthy yourself, you will establish a reputation as someone people can do business with.
If not, you are likely to attract to your life mirror-images of your own poor conduct which ultimately will ruin your business.
You can avoid this unpleasant consequence by imbibing these qualities yourself.
That is the only way you can easily find partners who exhibit same qualities to do business with.