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Albert Einstein: The important thing is not to stop questioning

These days I am discovering old posts of a friend which was better to read again and again and learn from last year. His post was wrote 6 years ago, February 2006.

There are things I didn’t understood very well. I only evaluate based on marketing material and presentation.  Sadly, many of those who choose niche products that do not know do the same. I will not detail the story, the fact is that at the end of the year I found loses, a strong red balance based on optimistic calculations made.  I learned from it that important choices must be purely cerebral, not based on emotions.

Because our clients turn to a service niche that I can not evaluate any way we made a small HOWTO on how to choose a business partner in an unknown area (say accounting, programming, legal, design, security) .

Basic rules:

Learn more. Do not you realize now, it’s not an excuse not to learn. You do not have to become expert, just understand the principles that work.

Search and find a community in the field. There are even communities of mascots, will undoubtedly find a specialized community. From it you can select prospective partners and learn new things by watching.

Get advice from specialists. If you can not do that, at least ask the community about how to find your partner. As a community get honest answers, is a context in which exaggeration is filtered.

Choose three potential partners. Rely on the knowledge gained to date and the recommendations received.

Request a sample (free sample sounds much better). If they are not willing to pay enough attention and importance now, make sure will not do so in the future.

Ask for references, the more the better. Avoid obvious sources, who might respond positively by obligation. Do not look for references to motivate a choice already made, looking for them to make a reasoned choice.

Choose a future partner. You should have all necessary information available. Let the price of the last place of your evaluation. Economics is often a too high cost.

Start on the road, but reserve your right to change your choice. You can cheat, but do not have to persevere.  Re-evaluate the options, then try, you will succeed eventually.

Keep getting a reservation when it comes to a sensitive area. Total trust in your accountant? but the lawyer? Better to be paranoid, rather than remain poor.

Calculate how much you lost so far due to wrong decisions. Share this time to be allocated browsing above steps. It pays well? Allows you to hurry?

PS: If all you do, is ask a friend who you think is skillful, you’ve found a wonderful excuse, not a solution.