Stupid Guest Tricks

Recently I was talking to a friend whose husband Rick, a sharp guy whose job was axed a few months back due to the economy, was looking into buying or starting his own business in partnership with his brother. They'd talked about it for years, and the time seemed right. Rick finds it very appealing to fail or succeed on his own terms, rather than at the whim of an employer.

The problem, as my friend shared, was that Rick is a very practical guy with a keen mind for number-crunching and business plans, while his brother tends to be more of the creative sort, with a great imagination and lots of really intriguing ideas.

Sound familiar? It did to me. Rick was getting very frustrated that his brother was always talking about possibilities, and he couldn't get his brother to focus on the numbers. So... I told my friend about Walt and Roy, one of the most successful brother-brother business teams in history. A dreamer paired with a get-it-done businessman -- just like Rick and his brother.

She passed that on to Rick, and he began to see his partnership with his brother in a new light, with his brother's different approach to the business as a complementary strength rather than a frustration. He's much more accepting that his part of the team will be the practical number-crunching and that he's not likely to get his brother to be the same way.

I later told Rick that history does not record the number of times Roy said to Walt, "You want to do what?," but I bet it was a lot! I'm really looking forward to seeing what he and his brother are able to accomplish together.

In Robert Heinlein's book The Man Who Sold The Moon, the main character was always saying to his money guy, "Don't tell me what I can't do, tell me what I can do."