Do You Know Your Business Partner?

Before you answer the question, re-read the title of the blog again. Your quality of your business is only as good as your supplier. I have already mentioned this in my previous writeup.The quality of your business partner is also important. Some readers might roll their eyes and say this is a no brainer. Yes! It is a no brainer, but the risk of business partner messing up is very real.

Few days ago, I got a call from client whom we worked on a restaurant project. The client asked me to help him to secure a supply of cooking gas for his restaurant. In Malaysia, cooking gas comes in giant canisters. It seems that he could not count on his chef to have the cooking gas delivered to the restaurant! This client was traveling as such he was not able to monitor the delivery.

What I did was straight forward, I called the chef making sure he is in the restaurant to take the delivery, call the supplier to arrange the delivery. I do not make any money out from this incident but there are some lessons can be learned.

The client should have been able to make delivery arrangements with the supplier before he travels. Cooking gas is the lifeline for any restaurant. It is also the single point of failure to the business should the restaurant runs out of cooking gas. Incident such as this is good for my business to built up the relationship with the client and supplier, but it is not healthy for the client when the business lifeline is out of their control.

I find it hard to accept the fact that chef is not capable in reaching out to the supplier. As a chef he should have ultimate control over the kitchen. The chef's conviction towards the restaurant is now being questioned. There is just no excuse for the chef on not following up on important issues such as ensuring the supplier of cooking gas. With a business partner who is not motivated, other business partner has to work harder to fill the deficit. In the long run, the business partnership will ultimately tear itself apart.

Starting a business and sharing the same dream is very easy. The willingness is to wake up from the dream and make things into reality is difficult. Choose your business partners carefully. If it not working out, shut it down.