First let’s look at the difference between a partnership and a service provider as these are the two most common business to business relationships that I’ve seen.  The definitions of each:

Partnership- A cooperative relationship between people or groups who agree to share responsibility for achieving some specific goal

Service- Work done by one person or group that benefits another.

In the artist business you can look at all of the professional relationships you have in these two ways.  When you hire someone like a graphic designer, generally you are in a service relationship.  Normally you are contracting this person for a specific project.

When making a deal with a service partner, the limiting factor to the relationship is usually just money.  In other words, for the relationship to make sense you just need to be able to afford it.  If you have enough money you can hire the best service providers in any category including: graphic design, label services, radio promoters and publicists.

Now let’s look at a partnership.  In a partnership people are joining forces for a united goal; Think of a record label, booking agent or management.  The limiting factor here isn’t money for service, it is a shared vision or goal.  So the next logical question is: What makes people unite on a goal or vision?

From what I’ve seen people evaluate a career vision or goal based on a combination of leverage and faith.  For example, for a baby band with no live experience (zero leverage, lots of faith in themselves) trying to partner with a major booking agency or label wouldn’t make sense (lots of leverage, zero faith in them).

However, that same artist could find someone in a powerful record label or agency who is a big believer in their sound (lots of leverage, lots of faith) then that person’s faith in the project could override the artist’s lack of leverage.  These types of relationships are inherently imbalanced.  In these scenarios, the side with all of the leverage is clearly in control and as soon as anything happens to diminish their faith the relationship dies.  As an example, think of all the terrible record label stories you’ve heard where “the band got screwed” by the label.  Fact is, the artist had little leverage (lots of faith in themselves) and came into a situation where the partner (label) had much more leverage and only enough faith to try it out for an album or two.  The label is no more at fault than the artist since it was a poorly balanced relationship from the beginning.

Without a doubt, the best partnerships are the balanced ones – the ones where the leverage and faith of each partner is approximately equal.  When you are both in the same ball park then you can play the same game – you are both excited to be working on the project, energy is flying between you and the career grows out of this unified vision.

If you want to create an amazing partnership, start by looking in the places where you’ll find people of similar leverage and faith.