Borrowing courage

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a number of conversations that quickly turn into brainstorms where ideas flow, connections get made, and thinking is unlocked.

So many of the business leaders, entrepreneurs and creators we work with try to do so much of their thinking alone. When we show up, often there is so much value in just being a sounding board for ideas to flow.

A question I often ask is, “Who do you collaborate with?”

After all, John Lennon had Paul McCartney (and then he had Yoko Ono).

Steve Jobs had Steve Wozniak (the Woz).

Tina Fey had (and has) Amy Poehler.

I could go on and on and list the partnerships and collaborations that have given rise to creators and business leaders who have shaped the world we live in today.

On the one hand, a collaborator offers a different perspective and skill set to yours. In the case of The Beatles, Paul gave John a foil for his more melancholic demeanour and lyrics, balancing depth with pop sensibility. That sort of balance shows up in so much of the music they created together and is a big part of their genius. When you create something that incorporates opposing tensions (like The Beatles did), you can't help but innovate (and did they ever!).

There is no question that when we find a collaborator, the expansion of skills and perspective makes things better and more comprehensive than if you were just doing something alone.

If you're working on your own as an entrepreneur or creator, you might be able to identify gaps in your skill set and then fill them. Struggle with bookkeeping? Hire an accountant. Struggle with technical work? Hire a developer or get advice from a tech friend.

But there is an overlooked, sometimes invisible benefit that comes from collaborating with others.

Building something new is hard work. It requires time, energy, skill and perseverance. But succeeding at building something new goes far beyond expanding skills.

Those who succeed are often not necessarily the ones who are objectively 'better'. More often, they are the ones who stick with it, through the highs and the lows, and just keep going.

As Steven Pressfield says in The War of Art, creative work is not a meritocracy. It is a war of attrition.

This dimension changes the dynamics of what makes a good collaborator. Skills and capabilities are needed and will get you into the game, but to stay in it, you will need something more.

That 'something else' is courage.

In a recent episode of The UNBLOCK Yourself™ podcast, we sat down with a local business icon (yes Trish, ICON), Tricia Mumby. She built and scaled a successful business, and since she and her business partners sold it, she's given back to the community by creating a mentorship network of business owners and by being a mentor herself to new businesses working to get their start.

She has volumes of wisdom and experience to share, and one piece of advice she offered in our conversation was around the importance of partnership in building a successful business.

In her business, Mabel's Labels, there were four co-founders, the 'friend group of four' as she referred to it. She talked about how each of them took ownership of a different lane in establishing and growing the business, which is that standard view of collaboration in a business partnership.

But she said one more thing about their partnership that stood out. She talked about how important it was for them as co-founders to lean on each other for collective courage and belief in what they were building.

This goes beyond skill-sharing. This is about borrowing courage from one another.

You might have the best co-founder or collaborator in the world from a skills perspective. You could balance and offset each other beautifully and each have a lane that you own. But what I've come to see is that the most important role a collaborator can have is being a partner in belief.

Getting into the game requires some degree of skill and vision. Staying in the game requires that and more. It requires courage to keep going when things get messy. It requires courage to keep believing when dozens, or even hundreds, of potential customers say 'no'.

Over the past two years, Whitney and I have had many moments where we've looked at each other, exhausted or defeated, and asked out loud, 'What the hell are we doing!?' It's happened more than we'd like to admit.

As complementary as our skills are to one another, that hasn't been what has kept us going. When one of us feels out of gas, deflated and ready to throw in the towel, the other one stops and says these three words, and means it.

“We've got this.”

I wonder how many times Paul might have thought about quitting music as a career and just getting into accounting. Or how close Steve Wozniak came to taking an engineering job at any number of tech firms in California. Or how close Tina Fey came to stepping back from impersonating Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, choosing instead to play it ‘small and safe’.

Each of these scenarios seems inconceivable because they became so successful. On the other side of them becoming successful, we can't even imagine what the world would be like without the music of The Beatles, the tools of Apple, or the satire of Tina Fey.

But... Paul had John. The Woz had Steve Jobs. And Tina had Amy. These weren't just people with complementary skills. They were true collaborators and partners.

So I'll ask you the same question: Who do you collaborate with?