Thought Bubble - Business Friends
VIDEO: 4:21 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven
There's a huge difference between business colleagues and business friends. One you work with in a professional capacity and the other are your peers and friends that offer you support and advice. Listen to Robert talking about both and why it's important to know the difference.
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:07
Hello there. I like to riff really on something I heard from Perry Marshall last week about the idea of business colleagues versus business friends, we all have business colleagues, everyone's got a business colleague people we work with who work with the nine to five, go home, understand, kind of what what they do and the business relationship, meet them in the boardroom, so on and so forth.
Robert Craven 00:34
And that's, that's good. And that's really valuable. And we talk business. Now, the point really here is what about business, friends, friends in business. So there is a real difference between business colleagues, where it's somehow some kind of transactional relationship, versus business friends, which is people, friends who care about you and want to understand what's going on, look out for you. Go the extra mile for you. And also, the idea of business friends means it isn't just about the ROI isn't just about the profit isn't just about the dividends. And also, there's a more fundamental piece than that going on there. Because the idea of a business friend, if we think about a mastermind group, or, or a similar type, type of type of operation, if we're business colleagues, we just took money, we just took turnover.
Robert Craven 01:30
But actually, the idea of business friends is going deeper than that. So guys, your initiative, we often talk about your will our purposes, which is to run the agency, you really want to run so you can live the life, you really want to lead so you can live the life you really want to do. So this is this is about getting deeper, beyond the let's let's get the revenue up and get the profitability up. This is about understanding how other people how they operate, what makes them tick. So I think the idea of business business friend is really important. So let me just give you a couple of examples of where it's not just about the business transaction.
Robert Craven 02:19
We had one person within a mastermind group and the problem was the wife wanted the kids to go to a particular school which was in the opposite direction to the office. So it apparently is not a business issue. But clearly it is because personal involvement keep the wife happy want to keep the kids happy, want to get the schooling happy, also want to somehow be in work at at eight o'clock. So I believe that that is fair game as a conversation piece to help someone to run a better agency.
Robert Craven 02:56
Another example is someone who was having bit of a meritless use, I believe that fair game in a mastermind, because if it's blocking or confusing your ability to run the business, then it's a fair game conversation to talk about. So I guess what I'm saying is, you know, you can have business colleagues, you can maybe your bank manager, maybe your accountant, is a business colleague, business friends have different business friends have their bit more for the duration, business family even more for the duration. And I just want to challenge you about about do you, you can go and get business colleagues. It's really easy.
Robert Craven 03:38
You can pay for them, you can buy them but but how many business friends do you have? And my argument would be about the mastermind group that I'm in and the mastermind group that I run is these should have business friends, people you can talk to people you can trust and safe harbour. So it's not just about the accountability. It's not just about the the people to talk to and the share. It's also about people who understand you. So business colleagues, business friends, do you have business colleagues probably do. Do you have business friends? I'll leave that one with you.