Having a Business Buddy

It’s so good to have a business buddy, someone to hold you accountable and support you in your business, especially if you work from home. Working for yourself and having the freedom to do whatever you want is lovely, but you must have someone on this journey with you not to feel alone.

This relationship doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t have to hold yourself to weekly meetings or any structure. It can just be someone who you chat with online as you grow your business.

We started talking through Instagram messages a few years ago. April invited Laura to be a guest expert on her Horses in the Morning Segment, and just a few short months later, this podcast was born.

How to Find a Business Buddy

It’s so hard when you are looking, but let your relationship with your business buddy build organically. We didn’t jump into any partnerships as strangers. We just got to know each other.

You don’t want to jump into business with someone you don’t know well, so it’s best to keep that pressure off of the relationship. Just let your friendship develop naturally and see where it goes.

Talking to friends and family members who only have experience with corporate jobs is hard. They just don’t get it. It’s not their fault. They’ve just never been in your shoes, so it’s hard to get the support you need from them. It’s such a relief to have someone who knows when to give you a kick in the butt because that’s what you need or knows when to support you becuase you need a shoulder to lean on.

Businesses can be an emotional roller coaster, especially when you are building or scaling. With every new level of success, new problems arise. Talking to someone who gets it makes it easier to navigate.

Your business buddy doesn’t have to be someone close to you or even in your timezone. April was in Germany, and Laura was dancing between California and Alaska when this partnership started.

Don’t put parameters on who your business buddy should be. When you pull up Instagram or visit someone’s Facebook group, who do you always end up chatting with? Someone who comments on a lot of your posts or who you comment on theirs? You may have a business buddy, and you didn’t even realize it. Send that person a message. Let them know you appreciate them and see where it goes.

The Benefits of a Business Buddy

One massive benefit of a business buddy is having someone to share information with. April enjoys researching so many topics and get’s SO excited to share what she learns. Laura is always there to listen and loves hearing what April is learning.

Together we brainstorm on how we can implement the info in our different businesses, and then we go off and get it done and compare notes later.

Often, you need someone to give you permission to leap into something new. While a husband or parent might encourage you to keep doing what is considered mainstream or not even know what to say, a business buddy understands your business, goals, and abilities. They can give you honest feedback about whether or not something is a good idea.

All those moments when we go crazy in our heads – is this going to work? Does this make sense? – are put to rest when you have a business buddy.

Excellent business buddies are also power partners. This means you offer a similar but non-competing service as your business buddy. Laura is the content creator. She loves planning curriculums, developing the experience for the people consuming the content, and writing the copy.

When it comes to tech, Laura is a bumbling mess, but April steps in and makes sure that content and copy shows up where it should, when it should, whether that be in a membership or course, someone’s email marketing campaign, on their YouTube channel, or with Facebook Ads.

When your business buddy is your power partner, you can refer business back and forth with great confidence. Each knows the other will do a great job, get the work done on time, and they can work together behind the scenes on the same client without the business owner having to facilitate information back and forth between two strangers.

Final Questions About Business Buddies

Who the heck in my circle could be my business buddy? Think about those people around you. Maybe you have a membership for Western riding, and people like your style and they ask you about English, but you don’t have any interest in adding that to your course development.

Find someone who’s doing something similar with English riding. Once you get to know them, you can refer those people to their business. They can do the same when their people want Western riding in a similar style. You can even reward each other with an affiliate link, so you get a little something for sending someone their way.

Women empowering women are so important in the business world, and a business buddy is a great way to take action. At the end of the day, we want to help each other be the most successful and happy human beings they can be.

We each other a lot of grace – we don’t work on content for this podcast if it requires us to stay up late or sacrifice time with our families or horses.
We push the episode by a day or two. We know that forced, stressed-out content doesn’t serve our audience or us, so we don’t do it.

As long as we can trust that we’re always doing our best, we’re not going to get mad at the other person when we slip up because it doesn’t do any good.

Laura knows that she’s putting more pressure on herself than April ever would, and the same is true for the other way around. That’s good enough for us.

If you want an excellent relationship with a business buddy, you need trust, grace, honesty, and a LOT of laughter. We hope you find someone who works well for you; you are not alone in your business!