When I was 19, immediately after high school, I made a horrible choice in a partner for a business I decided to pursue, away from my home area, “while waiting to know my next steps.” Kiangi, my prospective partner, had land, a whopping 10 acres of virgin ground, and the land had a stream running through it. I thought, hey we can grow vegetables!
We agreed easily, and I set out to work: digging, establishing a seedbed; clearing the land. After a few days, my business partner told me he needed to “go back home and attend to a few things.” Fast forward one month later: with my seedbed ready for transplanting, my partner had not shown up from his visit back home. Anxious, especially about my security in the remote parcel of land in a strange neighborhood, I went to check on my partner. I found him at home, relaxed, without a care in the world. What happened? I asked. He said he thought the work was too hard, and was waiting for me to come check on him.
“I have a better parcel of land in another place that you will love,” he told me.
“What about our cabbages?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about them,” said he. “This other place has better and more immediate potential profits!”
Reluctantly I set out with Kiangi for a new adventure. When he told me that all around the land was great pasture land, I bought two small goats and walked them the 20 km or so to the new place. Together with our farming implements the journey was not just a walk.
Kiangi was right, though: we had acres and acres of acacia trees, lots of pasture and virgin ground.
“What about water?” I asked.
“It rains. We can make a pan.”
Ok, then. We would farm, no doubt, after it rained. But meanwhile, we agreed, let’s make a killing burning charcoal. Then build a pan before the rain set in. We camped with a group of pastoralists that were there for the pasture and set to work, felling trees, lopping off branches, trimming. The heat averaged 38 degrees centigrade, and water was scarce. We took turns, once every three days, to go fetch water from a dirty river nearly 10 km away. Tough work.
Again, after one week, Kiangi got restless. “I need to go check on my family,” he said, and my heart fluttered. A week of work was visible: felled trees spread out all around us.
“Can we just first assemble the first lot of tree trunks? I can be covering them up with soil while you will be away” I proposed.
“Not necessary,” Kiangi assured me. “I will be back in two days. Just the weekend.” And off he went.
I could not carry the heavy logs alone, so I just continued felling more trees, and lopping branches off them.
Kiangi never came back. When the pastoralists had to move on, I couldn’t be left alone in the wilderness, so I went back up to Kiangi’s village, and he gave me the same story: The work was too hard, and the place too far away from home.
Six lessons:
- Choose a business partner who has the same values and level of commitment to a venture as you. If you do not agree at the core values level, it is unlikely that you can work together for long.
- The quickest test to commitment is a person’s willingness to sacrifice time and money. Skin in the game, it is called. Free things are easy to accept; earning needs a commitment to making investments.
- Choose a business partner who has a work ethic, and tenacity. Starting a business is tough. It takes a lot of time. Some people have what it takes to weather through the hassles and time demands of the startup period. Other don’t.
- Define, from early on in the business, what each partner will contribute – immediately and on an ongoing basis. Then hold regular review sessions to evaluate progress, and hold each other accountable as regards each person’s promised commitments.
- Create, document and adopt your the policies, processes and specific procedures around which the business will be run, and agree as to each partner’s decision-making responsibilities and limits requiring consultation.
- Decide how “stalemates” will be resolved, in the event that you don’t get to agree on the best course of action regarding an aspect of the business. For example, even though only the two of you may own the business, you might agree on an advisory panel that you call on regularly, e.g. on a quarterly basis.
- Chose a partner who has different but necessary skillset than yours, in order for your business to benefit from more skills than you alone can marshal. You may be a good marketer, for example, but the business also needs accounting skills.
Haron Wachira 