Entrepreneurs spend a lot of time thinking about speed.
How quickly can we launch?
How quickly can we hire?
How quickly can we raise capital?
How quickly can we enter a new market?
How quickly can we solve the problem standing in front of us?
After more than 30 years in business, I have come to believe there is a force multiplier behind many of those answers that entrepreneurs do not measure nearly enough:
Relationships.
The right relationship creates speed.
When you know the right person, you do not necessarily have to spend three months researching an unfamiliar problem.
You make a phone call. That phone call could save you months or even years of making the same mistake someone else already made and having to undo the damage.
When you need a specialized attorney, you do not start with a search engine and hope you choose correctly.
You call someone you trust and ask who they trust.
When you are considering an acquisition, raising capital, entering a new market, hiring an executive, negotiating a complicated agreement, or solving an operational problem, access to someone who has already been there can compress the learning curve dramatically!
That is why I have never thought of relationships as something separate from business.
Relationships are part of the infrastructure of business.
Business Relationships Are About More Than Networking
Networking has its place.
I have met plenty of great people at conferences, dinners, events, meetings, and through introductions over the years.
But meeting someone is not the same thing as having a relationship with them.
There is a big difference between someone whose contact information is in your phone and someone you know you can call when something really matters.
A real business relationship has history behind it.
Trust. Shared experiences. Follow through. Respect.
That is relationship equity.
You build it over time, and eventually it becomes one of the most valuable assets you have.
Relationships Compress Time
One of the greatest advantages of a strong relationship is access to someone else’s experience.
Imagine you run into a business problem you have never seen before.
You can research it. You can hire consultants. You can read everything available. You can make a decision and learn from whatever happens next. There is nothing wrong with any of that, and sometimes that’s the only option!
But what if you also know somebody who encountered almost the exact same problem five years ago?
They may be able to tell you in one conversation:
What they tried.
What worked.
What failed.
What they wish they had known.
Who they used.
What the warning signs were.
What they would do differently today.
They are not making your decision for you.
They are shortening the distance between the problem and a better decision.
That is an enormous advantage.
Experience is valuable partly because experienced people recognize patterns faster.
Relationships give you access to patterns you have not personally accumulated yet.
There Is No Reason to Learn Every Lesson Yourself
Entrepreneurs tend to be independent.
That is often part of what made us entrepreneurs in the first place.
We like solving problems.
We like figuring things out.
We are generally confident in our ability to find a way.
Those qualities are valuable.
But they can also become expensive if we convince ourselves that figuring something out personally is always the best approach.
It isn’t.
There is no trophy for making a mistake someone you trust could have warned you about.
There is no extra credit for taking six months to understand something another person could have explained in an hour.
There is no prize for finding the hard way.
Good entrepreneurs solve problems.
Great entrepreneurs also become very good at identifying who can help solve them faster.
The People Around You Can Change Your Ceiling
Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to work with some of the same people across multiple businesses and multiple stages of growth.
That has taught me something important.
You do not need everyone around you to have the same strengths.
In fact, you probably do not want that.
If the founder is a visionary, surrounding that person with five more visionaries may create a very exciting meeting and a very confused company.
Someone has to execute.
Someone has to understand the numbers.
Someone has to build the structure.
Someone has to protect the downside.
Someone has to know the details.
Someone has to challenge the assumption everyone else accepted.
I have spent many years working closely with people whose strengths complement mine.
I like thinking ahead.
I enjoy strategy.
I enjoy negotiations.
I enjoy seeing where something can go.
That becomes much more valuable when there are talented operators and financial minds around me who can turn that vision into something executable and scalable.
The best relationships do not simply support what you already do well.
They expand what you are capable of doing.
That is what makes a person a force multiplier.
What Is a Force Multiplier in Business?
A force multiplier is something that creates an outsized impact on the effectiveness or results of a person or organization.
Technology can be a force multiplier.
Capital can be a force multiplier.
A great system can be a force multiplier.
But some of the most powerful force multipliers I have encountered are people.
The right operator can multiply a founder’s vision.
The right financial partner can multiply access to capital.
The right salesperson can multiply distribution.
The right attorney can protect years of work.
The right connector can create an introduction that changes the trajectory of a company.
The right advisor can identify a mistake before it becomes expensive.
The right executive can take an area that required 30% of your attention and make it operate better without you.
That is leverage.
And relationships are how you gain access to much of it.
Trust Creates Speed
There is another reason long term relationships make businesses move faster.
Trust reduces friction.
When you have worked with someone for years, you begin to know how they think.
You understand their strengths.
You understand their weaknesses.
You know how they respond under pressure.
You know whether they do what they say they are going to do.
You know which subjects require a long conversation and which ones can be resolved with a five minute phone call.
That level of trust allows teams to move differently.
You do not need endless meetings because everyone is wondering what everyone else is doing.
You do not need to protect territory.
You do not need to spend half the conversation establishing credibility.
You can get to the issue.
What is the problem?
What are the facts?
What are our options?
Who owns it?
What happens next?
That kind of relationship can create tremendous operating speed.
Build Relationships Before You Need Them
One of the worst times to start building an important relationship is when you desperately need something from it.
Imagine the first time someone contacts you is:
“I need an investor.”
“I need a favor.”
“I need an introduction.”
“I need you to help me save this deal.”
“I need to hire somebody by Friday.”
That is not really relationship building.
That is an ask.
There is nothing wrong with asking for help.
We all need it.
But the strongest business relationships usually began well before the ask arrived.
Maybe there was a conversation.
An introduction.
A shared project.
A dinner.
A phone call.
An opportunity to help.
Then another one.
Eventually trust starts accumulating.
That is why relationships need attention when business is going well, not only when it is going badly.
Build relationship equity during the quiet periods so it is there during the difficult ones.
Give Before You Need to Receive
One of the easiest ways to build stronger relationships is also one of the simplest.
Help people.
If you know someone who can solve their problem, make the introduction.
If you have experience that could save them time, share it.
If you see an opportunity that fits their business better than yours, send it.
If somebody asks for advice in an area you understand, give them your attention.
If you say you are going to do something, do it.
You do not need a spreadsheet calculating the immediate ROI of every relationship.
Some relationships will produce business.
Some will produce opportunities.
Some will produce introductions.
Some will produce friendships.
Some may never produce anything measurable at all.
That is fine.
If every interaction starts with “What am I getting out of this?” people eventually notice.
The strongest people I know tend to remember who was willing to contribute before there was anything obvious to gain.
Your Reputation Travels Through Your Relationships
As your career gets longer, your reputation starts entering rooms before you do.
People talk.
Was the deal fair?
Did you keep your word?
Did you pay when you said you would?
Did you disappear when things became difficult?
How did you treat people when you had leverage?
Did you help?
Did you deliver?
Were you the same person after becoming successful?
Those things accumulate.
You cannot build a great network while continually damaging your reputation.
People may still know you.
That does not mean they will trust you.
And when the stakes get larger, trust becomes even more important.
A multimillion dollar opportunity moves very differently when two people already understand each other’s character.
Your reputation is part of your relationship equity.
Protect it.
Your Network Should Not Be 500 Versions of You
Another mistake entrepreneurs make is surrounding themselves exclusively with people who think the same way they do.
Familiarity feels good.
It does not always produce better decisions.
If you are building a serious company, your relationships should expose you to people with different capabilities.
Someone who understands finance better than you.
Someone who has scaled operations further than you.
Someone who has sold a business before.
Someone who understands technology.
Someone who knows your industry.
Someone who knows nothing about your industry and therefore asks very different questions.
Someone who has raised capital.
Someone who has deployed capital.
Someone who has hired thousands of people.
Someone who has managed through a crisis.
Someone who will tell you the truth.
You do not need to become an expert in every discipline.
You need to know enough to ask good questions and develop relationships with people whose expertise fills the gaps.
The Best Relationships Can See Around Corners
Some of the most valuable people in business are the ones who notice something you do not.
They have seen the problem before.
They recognize the behavior.
They know what happens next.
Sometimes you walk into a situation thinking you have one problem and someone with the right experience immediately sees that you actually have another.
You think you have a sales problem.
They see a compensation problem.
You think you have a recruiting problem.
They see a management problem.
You think you have a marketing problem.
They see a customer experience problem.
You think you need more capital.
They see a business model that needs to be fixed before you raise another dollar.
That perspective can be extraordinarily valuable.
The right person can sometimes identify a challenge or connection ten times faster simply because they have lived through something similar before.
That is why I place so much value on experienced relationships.
Your Relationships Matter Most When Things Go Wrong
Everyone wants to know you when things are going well.
The more interesting test comes when business gets difficult.
A major customer leaves.
The numbers miss.
An acquisition develops problems.
A lawsuit appears.
A key executive resigns.
Financing changes.
A market shifts unexpectedly.
Something you were certain would work does not work.
Those are the moments when you learn what your network actually looks like.
Who answers?
Who listens?
Who tells you the truth?
Who makes an introduction?
Who helps you think instead of simply telling you everything will be fine?
Who is still there when there is nothing glamorous about the situation?
Those are relationships.
And those are the people you should work very hard to keep in your life.
Relationships Create Optionality
A strong network does something else that entrepreneurs sometimes overlook.
It creates options.
You may not need capital today.
But knowing sophisticated capital partners creates options.
You may not need an acquisition target today.
But relationships throughout an industry create options.
You may not need a new executive today.
But knowing talented operators creates options.
You may not need legal help today.
But knowing an attorney you trust creates options.
You may not need a partnership today.
But knowing the right entrepreneur might eventually create a completely new company.
Opportunity often arrives through people.
The larger and more complicated the business becomes, the more valuable that optionality can be.
Relationships Do Not Replace Execution
There is an important warning here.
Having great relationships does not excuse poor execution.
Nobody can network their way around a bad product forever.
Nobody can relationship their way out of consistently breaking promises.
The right introductions are useless if you cannot deliver after getting in the room.
The right capital cannot fix a fundamentally broken model forever.
Relationships open doors.
Your character and execution determine whether they stay open.
That is another reason successful relationships compound.
People enjoy introducing people who make them look smart for making the introduction.
If someone introduces you to an opportunity and you execute exceptionally well, they are more likely to introduce you again.
If you waste the opportunity, they remember that too.
Relationships and execution reinforce each other.
Do a Relationship Audit
I think every entrepreneur should occasionally stop and look at the relationships around them.
Not the number of LinkedIn connections. Not followers. Not business cards.
Real relationships.
Ask yourself:
Who can challenge my thinking?
Who understands finance better than I do?
Who has already scaled beyond where I am today?
Who can help me see around corners?
Who understands operations?
Who understands capital?
Who knows my industry deeply?
Who knows completely different industries?
Who will answer my call when something goes wrong?
Who will tell me something I do not want to hear?
Then ask one more question:
Whose list would I be on?
That part matters.
Relationships are not assets you own.
They are something two people build.
The Right People Change What Is Possible
I have always believed entrepreneurs need to think big.
But bigger goals create bigger problems.
More locations.
More employees.
More capital.
More complexity.
More responsibility.
More decisions.
You are not going to personally become world class at every skill required to handle all of that.
And you do not need to.
Your job is to keep becoming better at recognizing the people, systems, and resources that multiply what you and your organization are capable of doing.
There are relationships in my life today that have taken decades to build.
There are others that created enormous value surprisingly quickly because the alignment and trust were there.
Some became business partners.
Some became advisors.
Some became friends.
Some became all three.
Looking back over a lifetime of entrepreneurship, I can identify plenty of important deals, systems, companies, and decisions.
But behind many of them, there was a person.
Someone who knew something I did not.
Someone who opened a door.
Someone who challenged the plan.
Someone who helped execute.
Someone who answered the phone.
That is the relationship advantage.
The right people do not simply help you do more. They can change how quickly you learn, how confidently you decide, how effectively you execute, and ultimately how big you are capable of thinking.
Lived By: Jimmy Ralph
CEO Board of Advisors
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