My business partner, good friend, and fast becoming expert in internet business, Matt Geri, and I have been doing a lot of talking and thinking over the past few days. We’ve been working together, along with Paulie Sabol, Donna Fox, Mandy Fintel, and several others this summer, building up a very large scale internet business. Throughout that, Matt and I have been working on our own projects and lately.. We’ve been trying to figure out what we’re going to work on together.
Up till now, we’ve sorta just “included” each other in everything we’ve done. I’ve done well in several unique niches with websites I’ve created, one of them breaking $100-a-day just yesterday. Matt’s done very well in a few of his own niches, building minisites and content networks that are already beginning to have some serious power in the search engines. (Check out MattGeri.com for info on one of his latest projects ;). As we’ve built our miniature web empires up, we’ve sorta just “assumed” that we’d be involved in everything the other did.
You see, on top of being business partners, Matt and I really are good friends. A lot of people could mistake us for brothers if it weren’t for his accent ;). To give some of you a bit of background, Matt and I first met just over a year ago, working as interns. Matt lived in Ireland and I lived in California. We flew out to Northwest Indiana, USA and spent the summer of 2004 watching our lives change right before our eyes. Its an experience that’ll stick with us for the rest of our lives.
So, as an affect of our friendship, we do a lot of things together. We’ve built websites together, brainstormed togethered, planned together, and helped each other on all sorts of projects, big and small. Now we’re beginning to move into the “big time”. Each of us are finally getting closer and closer to achieving financial freedom. It’s at this point that we have to decide.. What happens next?
Matt and I have a serious challenge to overcome.. We have a hard time finishing the things we start. We’ve both come up with brilliant ideas, we’ve worked them out, figured out the details, done our research, and we’ve known that they were solid ideas.. then, nothing happened! Something or another would come up in our lives and pull us away. Its been frustrating for both of us, to say the least. We know its our own responsibilities as well.. We’ve lacked a lot of the self discipline vital to becoming successful entrepreneurs. We’re getting there, that’s without a question, the road along the way has just sure been a long one ;).
So, here’s where we’re at..
Matt and I are finally recognizing how different we are from each other and realizing that those very differences are some of our greatest strengths! Those differences are a very strong part of what has made working together so fun and powerful for us in the past. One of the challenges through our differences has been recognizing and respecting each other’s needs.
This is a VERY important part of building a successful partnership..
When you’re working with someone who’s different, who understands things different, acts on things differently, and sees things differently, you have to learn to embrace those differences and make the most of them!
One of the things I really struggled with was having Matt’s approval on things. I’d bust out a 5 page article on something and send it his way.. If he didn’t care for the “concept”, I’d get discouraged and trash it! I had lost site of how different we were and instead of realizing that we could both be right, I felt that only one of us could. Matt’s struggled with the same thing. We both really are quite sensitive ;).
So, we’ve finally recognized that.. We’re learning not to let people’s approval or disapproval ultimately affect the things we do. We will NEVER be able to make everyone happy and it’ll burn us out if we try.
As to our future together..
Matt and I are going to focus on building up our own niches and markets and.. as projects come along, work on big projects together. There are just way to many advantages to having a partner and its something we both really value and enjoy.. I mean, when it comes down to it, its really about having someone to play basketball with when it’s time for a break ;).
That’s all I’ve got for now!
-Jonathan Wold
P.S. Stumbled across a cool blog today, check out Chris Pian. He’s getting ready to “go pro” with internet business and looks like it’ll be a fun experience to keep track of.