Law 2

Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies

In business, your friends are people or other business entities, that do business with you but have no relevant conflicts with your business interest (including your personal friends). Your enemies are your direct competition or other people/ business entities that can benefit from your failure.

Your Friends

Your business is all important to you so be careful with whom you allow access to your business. It is natural for us to want our friends to be involved with our ventures because we feel that we know them and that they would always have our best interest at heart. For the most part, this is true, but “the road to Hell is filled with great intentions”.
The problem with friends and business, is we tend to lend to much weight to their opinions because they are friends and over-look the fact they are not qualified to advise us on the particular topic and we try too hard to spare their feelings when we do recognized they don’t have good advice. Friends often, quietly, expect special treatment and that can cause conflicts if you have other people that you work with. Business can kill a good friendship! I am not saying that you can’t start a business with a friend or do business with friends, but be careful and watch for any signs of the friendship becoming strained or more negative.

Your Enemies

Keep your enemies close!! You want to get as close to your enemies as possible. It may require masking your true intentions, but all is fair (within reason) and they would surely do the same with you. Your competition forms the market that your business operates in. You want to be aware of their operating procedures, whom they use as vendors, company morale, profit margin… and whatever else you can find out.

Learn to use your competition to your advantage. Explore ways that your two businesses can  collaborate on a specific projects, but only if you stand to benefit the most.  The venture must be mutually beneficial, but you only enter into such arrangements if there are some benefits to your business that are not readily recognized by your “partner”.

Study your competition to identify their successes and failures, then use the knowledge to increase your success and reduce your failures. If one of your competitors is experiencing a boost in internet traffic and sales, find out as much as possible about how they got the boost and how you can recreate it.  For companies with a web presence, study their keywords, the directories they are listed with and marketing tools they use. Use your competetions’ ideas ….. I don’t mean steal their intellectual property, but if both of you make pens and your competition make a ‘high-end’ red pen, your company can make a ‘high-end’ blue pen and tell the world why your ‘high-end’ blue pen is so much better that your competitions ‘high-end’ red pen. You may not capture the market share on ‘high-end’ pens but you can catch a wave of success from your competetor success.

Create some dialog with your competition. This can be done through trade organizations, internet forums, industry conventions, etc. Dialog with your competition helps you stay in tune with market trends in your industry, identify differences in different geographical markets, learn of new challenges in doing business in your indusrty and give you a feel of the overall health of your industry and specific market.

Related Info:

“All warfare is based on deception. There is no place where espionage is not used. Offer the enemy bait to lure him.”
-Sun-Tzu

“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
-Sun-Tzu

“A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.”
-Baltasar Gracian

“We can learn even from our enemies.”
-Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD)

“Money can’t buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy.”
-Spike Milligan

From the Book:
Law 2: Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies
Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy.  They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.