Lots of people will ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
Oprah Winfrey
Im thinking about partnerships right now because Im involved in two publishing startups and they each contain a mix of people from marketing to finance to technical types and not just the content creators.
Point One
You can only grow your income to a certain point online as a sole entrepreneur / creative before you simply run out of time. The demands of modern online publishing/writing mean you can only do so much before managing the growth consumes more time than creating the content. You wind up as a publisher rather than a writer. And then the demands of being a publisher grow exponentially to consume even more of your time.
The issue is that most creative people tend to partner up with other creative people and this only produces more content. In my world this falls into doing more of something and expecting a different result.
Partner with those who challenge your viewpoint and add other skills.
Point Two
Truth be told, most creative types make terrible entrepreneurs. Its just not in the genetic makeup. Unless a creative person hooks up with a financial or marketing type, the creative will continue to sell hours instead of product. Selling hours simply means you take an hour to write an article (or however long) and you get paid X dollars. You then turn around write another article in an hour and get paid. Repeat until you run out of hours. Start all over again. You sell your time.
I think its like working in a factory only with a different job title.
You really need to break the cycle of selling hours and figure out a way to start selling product.
Point Three
Product demands a full business plan. I chuckle at some of my gardening friends who have a great idea for an app or online adventure but havent run the numbers. Or wont share the idea with potential partners because somebody might steal it. Friends who develop apps for others tell me most people who want to have an app concentrate on the app and not how to sell it. All the money goes to the technology and none to the marketing. Consequently, the failure rate is essentially 100% from an economic point of view.
Given that apps are a moving target with the expectation and production bar being raised with every new app its a tough market to crack particularly in a minor media genre such as garden writing. Hint want to make an app for gardeners make it a shopping app. But do a marketing plan before you start writing cheques.
And that my friends is where the third partnership point comes in you really need the business people on-board along with some tech-visionaries to make this work in the real world.
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