In the past few months, I’ve rediscovered a powerful secret to making life better and easier. It’s something I’ve talked about in ETR before – because I’ve experienced it before.

But just recently, I proved to myself once again that this secret can help you double (at the very least) your brainpower. And you know what comes with having a more powerful brain…

You have more and better ideas, and you come up with them more quickly. Which can lead to more products for your business, more marketing channels to explore, and, eventually, more money.

Best of all, this secret is very simple: Hook up with a partner.

Now there’s more to finding a partner than meets the eye, and I’ll get into that in a minute. But first, I want to show you how truly powerful partnership can be.

The Power of Partnership in Action

On Tuesday, my latest book, Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business, hit bookstores. This book is different from anything I’ve ever written. For one thing, it’s got a very narrow focus: multi-channel marketing. But the biggest difference is that I didn’t write it by myself.

Changing the Channel is my seventh book. I’ve already penned six books. So why, you might ask, did I need a co-author? The answer: Because I knew that writing the book with this particular co-author would make it at least twice as good.

My co-author, as you probably know, is ETR’s own MaryEllen Tribby.

When I first met MaryEllen, I knew she was special. She had the golden touch when it came to business building. So when the opportunity arose to bring her on as CEO of ETR, I jumped at it. And since she’s been at ETR, revenues have quadrupled.

While ETR’s revenues were soaring, MaryEllen and I had weekly meetings. And those meetings were a frenzy of idea-sharing. I would mention a marketing technique I’d used, and MaryEllen would talk about how she’d used it in the past. We’d brainstorm new products. We’d feed off each other’s enthusiasm, and we’d think about new ways to grow ETR. We’d leave those meetings feeling energized and full of ideas.

One of the major breakthroughs we made during that time resulted in Changing the Channel. You see, we’d both been testing marketing ideas throughout our careers. But once we started talking every week, we discovered something astounding: We’d been using the same 12 strategies, over and over, to repeat our successes.

After making that discovery, we knew we had to put those 12 profit-acceleration secrets into a step-by-step plan that CEOs, entrepreneurs, and even entry-level employees could use. And the plan – which became Changing the Channel – was doubly strong because we worked on it together.

We each brought a different perspective to the book-writing process. We encouraged each other through writer’s block. We helped each other strengthen weak chapters. We shared examples to help bolster our explanations. We challenged each other to include only our strongest and best advice… and on and on.

In the end, we wrote the book using more than twice the brainpower I could have provided had I written it by myself.

How to Recognize a Perfect Partner

In my view, a great partner has the following characteristics:

• She has something (besides money) to offer the partnership that you don’t have. This might be intelligence, assertiveness, creativity, perspicacity, a capacity for networking, an indomitable spirit – anything, so long as it is helpful to getting the job done.

• She is fair-minded. By that, I mean she understands that there are many ways to contribute to a relationship (see above) and she values the way you contribute.

• She is long-term-oriented. She understands that doing a good job on any major project takes time.

• She is loyal. She will never try to break the original deal even if it starts to become unbalanced.

And partners don’t have to be colleagues. Some of my best partnerships have been with mentors or superstar employees. One of my greatest mentors, JSN, helped me become a business owner, an entrepreneur, and a multimillionaire. My next partner took me even further.

Why Go It Alone?

Studies show that the majority of successful people rely on at least one other person. My own experiences validate those findings, as do the experiences of my most successful friends and colleagues. (I can’t think of a single lone wolf who made it to the top on his or her own. I know several people who think they did – but, in reality, they were helped by others along the way, and then denied those people the credit they were due.)

Surveys show that business partnerships achieve greater success than individual proprietorships. Statistically speaking, they are more likely to survive the difficult start-up stage, they grow faster, net greater profits (for both partners), and last longer.

The same can be said of social partnerships. The capacity of a single mind is enormous – but the likelihood that its potential will be fully tapped is very small. We are all limited by emotional hang-ups, negative addictions, and self-destructive behavior patterns. But those limitations can be broken through when you have a partner to push and prod you. And when you reciprocate by pushing your partner to do and think and see more than they would on their own – well, then you have the beginning of something very powerful.

The fact is, a partner – whether a mentor or a superstar or a colleague or a spouse – can help you reach success much more quickly.

As your career or business develops, you’ll face problems and opportunities you haven’t met before. In such cases, it helps to get advice from a talented, intelligent partner. Someone who sees the world differently than you do. Someone who has had different experiences. Someone who can offer you all the benefits his or her unique viewpoint affords.

And you can take all that additional experience and brainpower straight to the bank.

Great partners will not only make you rich, they will make your life easier. Start looking for yours today.

[Ed. Note: Now's your chance to "partner up" with two of the greatest minds in Internet marketing. In Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business, Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby combine 60+ years of their best marketing ideas, insights, and strategies. Spend a few hours reading the book, put its techniques to work, and soon you could be making more money than you ever imagined. Order your copy of Changing the Channel today.]

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 5:10 am and is filed under Business Building .