Business buddies

Have you ever met anyone who succeeded without help from anyone else? I’m sure you’ve heard the saying behind every great man there’s a great woman? Well how about changing that to – behind every great business leader there’s a great support team.

If you read the biographies or stories about great business people you will normally find stories about their support team. People who helped them along the way. Sometimes it is people they knew directly, occasionally its advice from books or stories which helped them in their situation.

Let’s face it, it can be very lonely running a business on your own, when you face challenges who do you turn to? In fact, who celebrates when you succeed?

I’m not saying get a business partner, although that may be a good answer for you. What I am saying is find yourself a support network, people you can talk to, whether to encourage you or someone who has experience with the type of problems you may face. Your support network can come from anywhere around you, friends, family, your accountant, solicitor, other business people and even competitors.

To share an example with you, one of our clients deliberately searched out people in his own industry to support him and his business, even though they delivered the same service. The way he could do this confidently was by searching out competitors who offered local services, similar to his own, in a different area of the country. They face exactly the same type of problems and can safely collaborate to resolve issues without any risk to their own trade. The results are fantastic, both businesses benefit from each others good ideas and collaborating on shared problems is really reducing the stress of dealing with them on their own.
In fact many people who could help you aren’t even in your line of business. How many businesses face people issues, or finance issues?

If you don’t have a support network already in place then I’d suggest that you start asking for help, the results can be astounding.

Gavin Taylor
Technical director
Mayes Accountants