How to Dance Your Way Into a Business Partnership

Business partnerships begin in all sorts of ways. For example, Pearl Consulting NYC wouldn’t exist without swing dancing. Charles and Laurel met over 10 years ago on a dance floor. 

Lately we’ve been pondering the remarkable parallels between finding good dance partners and finding business partnerships that work. 

I’ve Got the World on a String

In the marketing community, we have big-name stars like Gary Vaynerchuk or Seth Godin. In the swing dance community, our equivalent is international competitive dancers like Evita Arce and Michael Jagger. 

It’s hard to get a dance from a high-profile pro, and in the same way, small businesses may find high-level marketing gurus out of reach.

If you have the cash to spare to work privately with the best dance instructors, marketing pros, or business coaches, it can really pay off. Just don’t bankrupt yourself or your business in your quest for success. One of our dancer friends declared bankruptcy after spending thousands of dollars on lessons and events, and entrepreneurs who hire top-of-the-line business coaches sometimes find themselves struggling to pay the bills later on.

Choose wisely how much you’re willing to spend on your dream of instant stardom. Do you need one-to-one help or can you make do for now with group virtual lessons and on-line courses?

Can’t We Be Friends? 

It’s very common at a swing dance to ask a friend to dance simply because you like that person. But you might not enjoy the dance. They might have two left feet. You may find their style conflicts with yours. Their breath might smell. 

In business, we often develop deeper relationships with those we network with. Perhaps we have similarities in age or demographics or hobbies. But those commonalities don’t guarantee a good business relationship. We’ve had one or two people join our networking group who were great to hang out with, but were looking for specific types of clients we didn’t have access to like large banks or companies looking for high-end services. You may also find the equivalent of a dancer with bad breath in the form of a lovely person who doesn’t follow through on projects or is difficult to work with. 

Communicate clearly about the issues. We’ve found that it’s good to use diplomatic honesty and clear communication with our friends, both in dance and in business, to find ways to work around these obstacles when possible. Being in business with friends can be fun and rewarding as long as the communication and boundaries are clear.

Change Partners (and dance with me)

Sometimes at a dance event, someone asks us to dance with one of their friends. “You should dance with Sally, she’s a great dancer from Montréal I met at Swing Out New Hampshire, and I don’t think you’ve ever met,” or “This is my friend Fred, and he’s in your class track and doesn’t know anyone here, so I thought I’d help him meet some of the dancers.” It’s an effective way to help dancers in unfamiliar places. 

This is the business equivalent of the warm introduction. When a friend recommends someone to you that they know or have worked with, they can offer a little bit of information on why they might be a good fit for you and your business. Often, these warm introductions are most helpful when that friend is really clear on what makes a good partner for you. 

Get to know what makes a good referral for someone. One of the benefits of being in similar circles is that you get to know what types of referrals work for your networking colleagues to help them get business. For example, people in our network know that we work well with certain types of businesses.

I Won’t Dance, Don’t Ask Me!

It happens all the time. You’re just sitting on the sidelines at an event, and someone you’ve never seen before comes up and asks you to dance. What do you do? 

Some people, especially beginners and very advanced dancers who want to become teachers, are open to dancing with everyone. But others are less open. Some dancers will avoid eye contact with anyone they don’t know, unwilling to take the chance on a random dance request. They want to avoid the possibility of an unpleasant dance or, worse, someone inept enough to injure them. But there are ways to increase the odds of a yes, such as non-pushy friendliness, politeness, and a vintage style in attire indicating you're familiar with the scene. This can move you from “suspicious stranger” to “worth a try.”

In business partnerships, the equivalent to this is the cold introduction: the phone call, LinkedIn message, or email from a stranger trying to get your attention. Many people will ignore a cold introduction, although our friend Bruce Segall suggests that a gentle knock works better than a pushy request. 

If you’re going to make a cold introduction, keep it polite and well-targeted. If your message is well written, has a great subject line, addresses some key pain points, and is visually attractive, the chances of a response are much greater than to a generic intro (which unfortunately we see on LinkedIn quite a bit). The emails we get that repeatedly ask, “Did you get my message? I’ve been trying to contact you!” are our personal pet peeve (aren’t they everyone’s?). It’s the equivalent of the drunk person slurring out a dance request to a stranger. It’s no one’s favorite thing and doesn’t work to get people to engage with you.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

In the swing dance world, asking someone to dance one time is not a huge investment. As the late Lindy Hopper Frankie Manning once said, “Every dance is a 3-minute romance.” That small time commitment makes people more likely to agree to a dance. The smaller the commitment, the more likely you can get a yes.

Work on a smaller project first. One of our biggest recommendations when establishing a new business partnership is to start with a smaller project and see how it goes. If it goes well, keep dancing with them. 

A decade ago, two people had a dance. Now they live and work together. Those 3-minute romances can become so much more. In business, you also make many connections, some of which will grow into important partnerships. And in both dance and business, you’ve got to get out there and start moving to the music. Why not come dance with us?