Following story is 100% true.

Only the niche and names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Here’s the scoop:

Back in mid 2014 I got involved in a major project taking on part ownership in a company in a very rabid niche I’ve sold in before. My two partners and I have our marketing down pat, and stand to have a lot of fun and adventures (the profitable kind).

But, it’s taken us almost 1.5 years to get started.

Why?

Because we made a terrible mistake.

A mistake I have made many times before.

(What’s that definition of insanity again…?)

And, a mistake that has cost us each over a year’s worth of lost profits, lost sales, and lost time we can never reclaim.

The mistake?

Doing business with the wrong people.

By wrong, I don’t mean “bad” people.

Nor do I mean incompetent people.

These particular people we wanted to do business with are as honest (as far as we know, at least), professional, and sharp-as-a-whip smart as they come for the most part. No, by “wrong” I mean they simply didn’t want the company to succeed as badly as we did.

Thus, they got in their own way.

Slowed progress up for months to get things “perfect.”

Would not send us the content we needed in a timely manner.

(If at all, and even then we had to almost nag ‘em to do it.)

And, basically, didn’t care about it working as badly as us.

Thus, we had to “fire” several talented people.

And, cut the side of the business they would have been in charge of (and which would have made the company a lot more sales a lot more quickly) out altogether and change things around.

All because we didn’t “vet” the talent.

We didn’t really need these guys.

But, we thought we could change them and make them see the big picture.

(Obviously that didn’t work.)

Anyway, again, that’s almost 2 years we can’t get back.

And, it’s an important lesson for anyone doing joint ventures.

It’s also one of the 7 new “Email Players” rules I talk about on the next exciting episode of “The Ben Settle Show” podcast — streaming to a device near you tomorrow.

These Email Players rules have become fan favorite episodes.

And we wrap up the first 70 of them tomorrow.

In the meantime, listen to prior shows here:

www.BenSettleShow.com/antipreneur

Ben Settle