When strategy meets design: the perfect match.

Dec 7

Some things are just better together:

Peanut butter and jelly.
Ben & Jerry.
Socks.

In our opinion, the best combination of all is design and strategy.

When Fruitful Founder, Ben Lueders started a small design firm in his basement, StoryBrand wasn’t even a twinkle in Donald Miller’s eye, let alone one of the most powerful messaging frameworks available.

Impactful design and compelling messaging can stand on their own but when married together, bring more value and clarity to your brand.

When Fruitful client, Access Period approached us for rebranding and a fresh new website, we started the process with the foundation for its messaging; the StoryBrand BrandScript.
The BrandScript helped Access Period identify its ideal client and what the client wants that Access Period provides.

Strategy meets design.

A brand’s logo and imagery should make it clear what industry it serves.

Apple has a very clean, straightforward logo that has become synonymous with luxury, efficiency, and creativity. The imagery Apple uses elicits an aspirational identity; someone who is untethered by wires to be able to dance freely to their iTunes playlist. Subaru is great at this as well, playing up the idea of freedom, and attractiveness, and appealing to dog lovers because…dogs.

Access Period’ needed a clear, uncluttered design that communicated what industry it serves and its authority. in the. Our design team replaced the placeholder logo with a dynamic and impactful design that Access Period could use across multiple platforms and mediums like swag items and stationery.

Want to learn more about what goes into rebranding? Read about Access Period’s important mission to bring awareness and remove the stigma around period poverty.

Dr. Hannagan is an executive leadership consultant who has worked with business leaders, the United States Government and Military leadership. Listen in for an episode you don’t want to miss, as Dr. Hannagan shares secrets from the U.S. Military on how non-military leaders can build an employment brand and be leaders worth following.

Check out Episode 11 of Growing a Fruitful Brand and listen in about how Raj and Ben made a better customer experience by marrying good design and strategy.

Ep.11: How I met my business partner.

Automated Transcript

Raj Lulla:
Hit the fan.

Ben Lueders:
Hit the fan. Hit the fan with Ben and Raj.

Raj Lulla:
And we'll do a Thanksgiving episode called Hit the Fan, tryptophan.

Ben Lueders:
It's just right there.

Ben Lueders:
How do you find people you want to work with long-term? Whether you're looking at bringing on a business partner or just trying to find employees you can count on, it's hard to know who will be the right fit. Hey, welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees. I'm Ben Lueders, founder and art director of Fruitful Design and Strategy. I'm joined by my business partner and brand strategist Raj Lulla. How do you find a good business partner? Like I just said, Raj is my business partner, but when I first started Fruitful, it was just me and entrepreneurship can be a little bit lonely.

Raj Lulla:
A hundred percent. And I had also started a business around the same time, and we were finding this thing where I needed your services, you needed mine. And it felt like we're all, we're both in our little worlds trying to survive and that can be lonely.

Ben Lueders:
It can be terrible and so adding a good business partner can grow your business way faster than you ever could have grown it yourself, but if you take on a bad business partner you can also ruin your business just as fast.

Raj Lulla:
Have we decided which one I am yet? I guess we're still here, so it's probably okay.

Ben Lueders:
How long has it been?

Raj Lulla:
Five years now.

Ben Lueders:
Wow. Time flies. So I think that's proof that this has been a good partnership and we get asked this all the time. I mean, people see the partnership that we have and they want to know, how does this work? What is your arrangement? And they're curious if they should explore joining forces with someone else and partnering with someone else. It seems really scary. In fact, when we were first pursuing this, our partnership, we had a lot of people telling us, no, don't give away any equity, run away, especially equal partnership, 50/50 partnership, which is what we have.

Raj Lulla:
And this also just isn't true of equity partners because a lot of times the people who you might consider to become a partner in the business are either currently employees or our future employees or in our case, I was a contractor who was working with you. And so finding the right people that you want to work with long term, don't just turn this off because you're like, oh, I'm not thinking about taking on a business partner. It's really about finding those people who are a good fit for your organization and that you could see yourself working with in five or 10 years. We always ask people in interviews, where do you see yourself in five years? But sometimes we don't stop to think for ourselves, do I want to see this person in five years and-

Ben Lueders:
I never thought about that before. I got a lot to think about after this episode.

Raj Lulla:
And so this isn't just true of finding a business partner, though it is helpful in that conversation. It's also true of just finding people that you want to work with long term, including employees and contractors.

Ben Lueders:
Well, we've already started telling a little bit of our story, and I know that we often say that our clients should not tell their story so much. We get asked all the time, how did we find each other and why our partnership worked so well. We were just at a conference together where a lot of people knew Raj, but they didn't know me. And so many of them were asking me, it's like, how did you guys meet? How does this work? And so today we're going to share three things that we believe make our partnership work.

Raj Lulla:
Before we do that, we have to give a little bit of context because I know that probably to most everybody who listens, especially if they're new to Fruitful, it just looks like we're Ernie and Bert or the two old guys in the Muppets that-

Ben Lueders:
Statler and Waldorf for you nerds out there.

Raj Lulla:
And that we're just kind of a pair that we come together. But you started Fruitful.

Raj Lulla:
A long time ago in your basement, as you said. And then I came along it, even though I've only been a partner for five years it's actually, we worked together for much longer than that. And from your side, how did that start?

Ben Lueders:
I mean, I had in the back of my mind at a pretty young age where I was still going to design school that someday it would be so fun to run my own design firm and kind of be my own boss. But I was working at a small design firm. If you rewind 10 plus years, I was working at a small design firm and watching what my boss was doing and it got to a point where I was like, I think I could do this myself. The design part of it, I liked people, I liked design. I knew squat about running a business of course. I was learning as much as I could from my boss, Donovan.

Raj Lulla:
And thankfully you married well. That helps.

Ben Lueders:
. That's true. And my wife, my other partner really completes me as well. And she's a lot more attention to detail, really good at paperwork and really good at just making sure we're not in trouble tax wise. She was just sending me a tax document this morning, was like, do you guys know about this? I was like, yes, I maybe.

Raj Lulla:
We'll see.

Ben Lueders:
And so she helped a lot too in those early days. But it did not take very long after starting Fruitful Design as it used to be called full time, that I realize, oh man, I am like, I am in way over my head. My wife did. She jumped in near full time unpaid to just get this, keep this place running, which was put a lot of strain on our marriage and a lot of stuff at that time.

Raj Lulla:
Thanks Meg.

Ben Lueders:
Thanks Meg. We're always indebted to you. And Raj mentioned is so crazy, Raj, we have a mutual friend who saw that Raj was looking for a graphic designer to help him with some publications at the private college that he was the communications director for and we got connected and it was just a great client relationship. It was a really collaborative, because one of the big things we were doing together was actually a school magazine. And so he was doing a lot of the writing and wrangling people to do some writing. He was doing photography, he was also the photographer, very creative person. But he was able to pull off this really cool project and I was just along for the ride as a designer. And so like Raj mentioned we were already just working together. We were learning how to, we had no idea we were going to become partners in the future, but we were learning how to work together and getting to know each other as friends as well.

Raj Lulla:
and you were teaching me things as well. I can design. I've had Photoshop on my computer for a very, very long time, but it takes me a long time. I don't necessarily know all the principles of design. And there would be times where I really respected you as a designer for pushing back on me. And I'd give you a headline and you go, it's too many words and you know, you get that moment.

Ben Lueders:
I still love doing that.

Raj Lulla:
. You get that moment as a writer where it's like, excuse me, I'm the writer here. But trying to be a teachable person myself I took that and said, okay, cool, how many words we need? Okay, we need to go from 10 words to six words and then, but that sharpened me as a writer of how can I get rid of the fluff? How can I make this a more impactful thing? And that's where we really started to see the kind of marriage of design and strategy that it's sometimes the constraints of the size of a piece make it necessary to shorten the phrase that you're going to use to make it more visible, to make it more impactful. So that makes both the design and the writing, the copywriting, the strategy better for those pieces. And so it wasn't just a one way thing of me kind of managing a project you were working on, it was also you improving the quality of what I was working on and that just worked really, really well.

Ben Lueders:
Well, first of all, thanks Raj. But as you can see already in that little story, and we'll get into more of this later in some of our points, but you can see we had very complimentary skill sets where he was really amazing when it came to writing copy, writing headlines, strategizing what should go where, even in a student magazine, taking amazing photos and I loved giving room for those photos and letting them, showing off his work in that way. And it was just a really collaborative and a very just satisfying partnership already then. We're partnering as a more collaborative client engagement, but we're having a ton of fun doing it. And so when Raj, a few years later, he leaves and he started his own photography business and he started doing some strategy and content consulting on the side he immediately started bringing me work. Tell us more about that.

Raj Lulla:
Well I think the way you're describing it of, and thank you by the way on the photos piece, I don't think I even realized it until you were just talking about it, but how satisfying it was to me to see my photos be given that much room and also you helping pick the best one to display in a certain way. A lot of times as a photographer, especially at that time when I was very new in the business, I would get done with a shoot and go, okay, that was my last one because I don't think I got anything good. And then to watch it come to life in your hands of no, this is how this should live and you really only need one out of a hundred that's good when you're an early photographer. And so watching you make those things better than the sum of their parts and it's like, , you put a headline here and the text over here and everything starts to come together.
So I was doing my best work with you and I think that you were doing a lot of your best work with me. And so that ended up working out really well. In the meantime, I was also an entrepreneur. I was starting my own business and I had these clients that needed work done. They needed to tell their stories or get into their customers stories more and they needed to revamp their websites and I only had half of that equation. I had text and photos, but I didn't have the design piece behind it. And so I needed you and-

Ben Lueders:
I needed more work at that time. So it was like, it's amazing the timing of some of this stuff. You can't you know... It's hard to project that on someone else. You can't plan on that always, but there was some really cool timing pieces that play into our story a lot.

Raj Lulla:
. It had happened a couple years later. We both might have stayed really good friends and contract relationship rather than a business partnership just based off of when both of our businesses were growing up and the needs we both had. But from my side, I know I needed this resource of design to really bring this work to life and I was able to manage those projects, but I needed the thing that glued it all together. And that's what I found with you at Fruitful.
Ben Lueders:
. So he started finding these clients or clients were finding him, I don't know exactly sometimes-

Raj Lulla:
A little bit of both.

Ben Lueders:
Little bit of both. And then he'd come to me like okay, we've got this retainer basically of I'm going to be doing monthly strategy stuff, weekly strategy stuff with this client, but they're going to need these deliverables. And so it was so funny, our first couple contracts we had with these guys since we weren't actually business partners, we were collaborators and contractors, we had these clients actually signing two different contracts, writing two different checks to two different entities to Fruitful Design and to Lulla Photography at the time and so it got to a point though as that started really taking off that it almost got comical-

Raj Lulla:
Messy.

Ben Lueders:
Or like... and just messy. And it's a bad user experience. It's like we were starting to think about partnership or how to hire Raj or what should the nature of our partnership be in order for this to just be a better and more honest experience for what our customers were experiencing.

Raj Lulla:
And then we turned it into we'll just have the whole contract underneath Fruitful and then you can just pay me out for the projects I'm working on. And then it turned into, I would sit in the Fruitful office several days a week because it's just more convenient to work on doing some photography work even in the Fruitful office. But then I'd be hearing you having meetings with clients working on their websites and I don't know if you ever have this experience where you're watching people break up at Starbucks or something and you're just like, you should say this, just [inaudible 00:13:07]. And we were having that experience where it became inconvenient for me not to be on every project. And likewise too, I mean I'm building my own photography website, not wanting us to ask you to do it because I don't have the money to pay you to do it at the time. So we were just kind of inconvenienced on both sides and-

Ben Lueders:
It's so weird looking back now and we were just kind of bumping around but kind of growing into each other. It really happened more organically than we, and it felt clunky sometimes at the time because we didn't know what it was going to become. But obviously there was a few things that happened that really kind of forced us to really consider, okay, what are we doing here? How do we do this?

Raj Lulla:
and I think part of that is that we didn't realize at the time kind of all the pieces that were in play. I didn't know, for example, that Meg had worked at a law firm before and that she was bringing a lot of that kind of structure to Fruitful. And I was having to do it on my own over on my side, but you didn't realize how much you saw me more primarily as an artist in photography and copywriting that you didn't know how much of the business strategy and pricing and all those things I was doing for myself. And even before that when I was at the college managing a budget of I think about a million dollars at that time. So there were so many things that we hadn't quite learned about each other yet. And so even when we took the step into me working full-time at Fruitful, it was a little bit tentative of what's he going to do here exactly?

Ben Lueders:
, . That is a weird thing because I remember at that time I'd gotten to know Raj, like you said as a contractor and even then as a friend a bit, but it was still kind of this feeling of how is this going to work? What all does he do? And then of course I was blown away by all that this guy can do and how it compliments the things that I do as well.

Raj Lulla:
We promised three things that we found in our relationship that would help other people decide if an employee or a contractor or even a equity business partner would be someone smart to bring on. And so, well let's start with those. What are those three things that we would tell people to look for that we have found?

Ben Lueders:
, I mean one of the things, the first thing that you heard in our story coming out was someone that's already bringing value to your company. You want this, if you're going to partner someone, you want it to feel the least risky as possible. You want it to not feel like a gamble. You want this to feel like a sure bet. You want to already know, not just in the abstract that this person has talents and skills and abilities, but you want to have been in the trenches with them. You want to, and you want to know that they've already been bringing value to you and your business and that was definitely true in our relationship. I mean, it got to a point where Raj was the face of my company to over half of our clients and that felt kind of crazy. When people would think of Fruitful, his face would pop up before mine in people's minds because he was that first point of content and helping them with their strategy.
And I was behind the scenes designing. That was a huge shift. I had gotten to a point where I was like, I am Fruitful. I just felt like I was synonymous with our brand and it was like, oh, here comes this guy and he is bringing so much value, nurturing these relationships and doing a lot of sales also. I mean it's like I wasn't out there hustling the way that you were. And so, , you want it to feel more like a merger and less like a gamble or a risk. And that's really how it felt. When I frame it to people who ask, it's like we basically merged our two companies. The people, they used to tend to think, why would you give away so much of your ownership to some guys, to someone else? And I was like, no, we just merged our companies. We were bringing equal value. We were both equally invested and we just really merged our two companies and our talents together. And so I think that's how it should feel.

Raj Lulla:
And we mitigate that risk too by saying that I would only start with a certain percentage of ownership and that it would grow over time. Now we ended up accelerating that because it gets messy for tax purposes and a lot of other things, but, and also just the fact that it was so clear after even a year and a half, two years, it's like, oh, that this is what the future of this company is for both of us and we want to make sure we're both all in. And so we accelerated that, but it wasn't written that way to start with.

Ben Lueders:
No, no, no, no.

Raj Lulla:
We decided to take it slow.

Ben Lueders:
. Well and part of that comes from, I think a lot of the advice that people were giving us of just like 50/50 ownership. I don't know if you all feel the same way, but a lot of-

Raj Lulla:
People were probably throwing popcorn at [inaudible 00:18:14]

Ben Lueders:
There's a lot of stigma. I know we'll probably get some hate mail over this or some weird comments. I would love to talk about that. Feel free to say what you will on the comments, but let's talk about that a bit actually. I think that is a unique thing. I think some people might recommend 51/49, so there's always someone who has a majority. But I think for us, I'll let you speak to it too, Raj, 50% of the time. But for us it felt more honest and more, it was more true of what the actual relationship was and should be.

Raj Lulla:
. Well, and my dad was an entrepreneur for all of the time that I can remember growing up and I had seen unequal partnerships where somebody, he was helping somebody else grow their business, whatever. And I just knew that it was going to be difficult for me to come to work at Fruitful and always know that no matter how hard I worked or how much value I brought, and again was already bringing 50% of the business to know yes, but if Ben decides tomorrow that this is over or whatever, I don't have a vote. I mean, because to me, that's what 49 represented. It's like, sure, there would be a conversation, you would owe me a conversation, but ultimately you would have the unilateral decision making power that I was betting a lot of my future on. And it never sat well with me. So I would rather have, like we did grow into that trust and say, hey, but where we're going to end is at equal 50/50 ownership. And that's the way it needs to be for both of us to feel a hundred percent in all the time.

Ben Lueders:
Think of it kind of like in a marriage relationship, you also want that to be 50/50. You don't want it or a hundred, a hundred, whatever they say. . Which is really what this is. The 50/50 is just, is a representative of both of us giving a hundred percent of ourselves to this. We're a hundred percent invested. You never would want to see a marriage or any other kind of partnership where it's like one is more invested than the other or gets they get more out of it than the other. It just that feeling of inequality just doesn't, it doesn't really work. And it's not just because I'm so generous and so not greedy that I'd be willing to do that with a friend, but that I wanted a hundred percent of Raj. I needed, there's a weight that comes with, a weight of responsibility that comes with ownership of a company that any of you that are business owners you know what I'm talking about, especially if you're going it alone, it can be just crushing at times and knowing that there's someone else that is equally crushed that can carry that burden.
I mean, I really wanted that. I really wanted that a lot. Not to crush Raj, but that we've now in over these five years, we've been through a lot. There's been some tough stuff that we've gone through, but guess what? We got to go through it together. And that makes it so much easier, even just to have someone to vent at the end of the day or in a one-on-one check in together on a leadership meeting. It really it hurts to see Raj experience hard things in the company. I'm sure hard for him to see me go through hard things, but we get to share each other's load, we get to hear each other out. And it's so nice to know that there's someone who is equally as invested in the success of the company and in me.

Raj Lulla:
You got to have that sort of American tale somewhere out there moment where you go to bed stressed about what's going to happen next in the company and you look up the ceiling or maybe out the window at the moon and then that the other person is across town looking up at the same moon going, yep, this is tough.

Ben Lueders:
Which is the Tonya and which is the [inaudible 00:22:22] in this relationship because we do have a lot of similar loves and appreciations for-

Raj Lulla:
Childhood movies.

Ben Lueders:
Childhood movies. You already heard our Muppet reference earlier.

Raj Lulla:
I would've gotten a Waldorf and Statler. I would've gotten there.

Ben Lueders:
, you would have.

Raj Lulla:
So Ben, we talked about how a business partnership can be a lot like a marriage, and one of the things everybody knows is how important communication is to a marriage. And so what are some ways that we figured out that our communications styles and priorities worked with each other, either from early projects or my early days of working at Fruitful? How did you know that that was working?

Ben Lueders:
. I mean, I think we've always noticed that we both have a high value for honesty, transparency, for just neither being any sense of ambiguousness. Like we like to get things resolved. We don't like there to be lingering emotions or feelings. It's like, hey, it is what it is, here we go. Direct communication. And so I think even though we're again very different people in some ways we both do kind of value that, just that directness and that honesty.

Raj Lulla:
. For me, one of the things that I really valued in our communication was that when I gave you feedback early as a designer you would take that feedback and there wasn't a lot of ego behind it. It was just like you knew to take whatever I needed to say and filter that. And you didn't always do exactly what I asked for, but you took the feedback and you made it better. You knew where I was trying to go with things and you received it well. And I've worked with a lot of artists. My first 10 years of my career was working with artists in non-profit settings and that can be a struggle with creative people. So I knew from my side that we could have honest conversations and get somewhere with it.

Ben Lueders:
Well, I did go home and cry every night though, so there was a lot of tears you didn't see for sure. But I know that ego, that designer ego was beat out of me in my first design job. And I would recommend for anyone in the design field get a first job that just beats it out of you. It makes you throw away comps that you love and were so precious about that you just didn't actually serve the client. So, no, I appreciate that. And it's mutual Raj. I think like you mentioned before I sometimes had things to say about your headlines being too long and we were in it for each other from the beginning. We wanted what was best for each other, but also for what we were doing. We wanted to create really good work and so I think that was also at the basis of our communication. We knew that we were never going to let the quality of our work slide because of ego.

Raj Lulla:
or even to just tiptoe around each other's feelings.

Ben Lueders:
Exactly.

Raj Lulla:
And one of the things that we've learned over the years is that because of that we have this spirit of earnestness around here and we're not playing games that are trying to manipulate each other. And if anything, we've been caught off guard a few times when we've dealt with people who aren't that way, where they're trying to work some kind of angle or something. And we just tend to be so forthright and our clients do too, especially really good relationships that you know you kind of attract what you are in those types of qualities and characteristics.

Ben Lueders:
If you have that person in your life who after talking with them or hanging out, you wonder to yourself, are they manipulating me or are they playing a game? And even if you're wondering, that's probably not the person that you want to be your business partner. I'm not saying that person's necessarily terrible, but you may not be communicating working together super well if that's even a thought.

Raj Lulla:
. So our last one here, Ben, I have a little bit of a story about, my wife used to work at a university in California and she was in a psychology class and they were talking about what makes a healthy relationship. And the professor said you really have to find someone who compliments you. And he is like, what do you think that means in a relationship? And this sweet probably 18, 19 year old boy raised his hand and goes, well, your wife should say good things about you. And of course the professor meant compliments as in fills in your gaps and-

Ben Lueders:
With an E, right?

Raj Lulla:
, with an E. And that's something that we've discovered is that to find a good business partner, it'd be easy, especially in a creative field to find somebody who is very similar and it's like, cool, we're both artsy and creative and don't know how to run a business and it's all going to be sunshine and rainbows all the time, but that is something we found that our differences actually make this relationship work really well.

Ben Lueders:
, I think sometimes with employees you might want a couple that are more similar in strength to you, you can understand them, you can multiply your efforts, et cetera. I would say with a business partner in our experience, having someone that is actually pretty, is wired pretty differently can really help complete you in a lot of ways. And I know it's kind of cliche, I mean it's similar in a marriage like you said, and we do actually compliment each other a lot. You've heard us do that a few times with an I. It's really important to see those differences as ways that we can be better together. And I do think we are better together. There's things that Raj is somehow able to say that I totally agree with, but I just wouldn't be able to say it the same way because of just the way that we're wired and we're able to go a lot further, a lot faster. Do you want to talk about some of the ways that we are different? I mean, people might already be able to guess, but maybe not.

Raj Lulla:
So one of us is an extrovert and the other is an introvert. Go ahead and just pause and guess which is which. Type in the comments below. I think you can guess just based on smiles per minute, which is true in this relationship. .

Ben Lueders:
I am the extrovert.

Raj Lulla:
, definitely Ben. And again, you might think that, that might be a little bit of a clash, but I find Ben to be my shield at networking events because he is happy to meet other people, but then-

Ben Lueders:
Raj is a very functional introvert, by the way. He probably talks to more people than I do. He just like cries at night about it.

Raj Lulla:
I hate that term, by the way, functional as if it's a disease.

Ben Lueders:
This is our first fight, you are watching. Speaking of communication, this is our first fight and you're watching it. Sorry about that.

Raj Lulla:
No, no, no, it's fine. But people say it all the time and it's like-

Ben Lueders:
You never hear anyone say functional extrovert, do you?

Raj Lulla:
Right, exactly.

Ben Lueders:
Just assume that being an introvert is a problem. That's so bad. That's so wrong. I hope I haven't just offended half of the entire world.

Raj Lulla:
Well, they're all people who are listening to this with headphones on by themselves probably. So yes, you've [inaudible 00:29:38] entire audience. No, but , I mean, so Ben in those social situations is often the one to kind of break the ice with people. But introverts are often known for depth and so going deep in relationships. So after he's met somebody, and then the problem with extroverts is that they always have the same conversation, which is like, oh, it's so great to see you. We should get coffee sometimes and it never happens whereas an introvert will come behind and be like, we actually should do that coffee and I'd like to talk for three hours.

Ben Lueders:
, exactly. That's a good call.

Raj Lulla:
So, we work well together in that way.

Ben Lueders:
Raj is much more business minded than I am and I know I kind of alluded to that in our story a bit, but I tend to just be more people minded, relationship minded, design minded as well, the work I care about. But when I was thinking of starting my business I was really just thinking about the people I could work with and how more of the relationship side. And Raj comes in and is like, okay, this thing's got to be profitable though, and we got to do this and you're not good at this and you need to be doing and I'm going to do this. And he was much better at making sure we're not getting in trouble with taxes, et cetera. And I really appreciate that.

Raj Lulla:
One of the early ways that we discovered this was as we talked about how we are still finding my value in the business early on, our office was directly behind Hardy Coffee down at 60th Avenue in Maple, high Autumn, and the wonderful crew there at Hardy, but we were right behind them, and because of that a lot of our friends would patronize Hardy, and they would walk right by our door and they'd see Ben, everybody loves Ben, and they come in and they talk for a long time. And I don't know if you know this adage in business, but time is money when it comes to-

Ben Lueders:
No, no, no, no, no.

Raj Lulla:
... especially service based businesses. And so I came and heartlessly locked the door. And it wasn't that we wouldn't say hi to people sometimes and let them in, but a lot of times it's a nice wave. Okay, great. Enjoy your coffee and then we actually got back to work. And so that's probably actually a great example of I came in-

Ben Lueders:
Every one of those people who came in became lifelong clients, we've made millions of dollars off of them Raj, so I disagree.

Raj Lulla:
But that's a good example of how I came and crunched the numbers a little bit and decided that we needed to be able to, we want to spend time with people, but do it in an intentional way so that we're not losing the business at the same time.

Ben Lueders:
Oh, totally. And it's funny, even thinking back on that, I haven't thought of that in a while. And even as an extrovert though, I like to get stuff done. And that was actually filling with a lot of stress and anxiety of should I even go to the office because sometimes my whole day will be eaten up with just being a nice person. And it's like I like being a nice person and everything, but I also wanted to make money and I also wanted to do stuff. And it's just nice to have Raj to just be the steady person, be like, no, we're not doing this anymore. And you've been able to give me the voice and the words to say the thing that's hard for me to say because I'm so afraid of-

Raj Lulla:
Trying to protect yourself.

Ben Lueders:
Afraid of hurting other people's feelings, but you're able to actually protect me a little bit and in that, so , I've always appreciated that.

Raj Lulla:
Likewise, the same thing goes the opposite direction where I will see the numbers, I'll see the strategic play, and you always remind me to think about how it impacts people and what conversations need to happen in order to make this happen, or whether we should not choose not to do something, even if the opportunity is there or if the need is there in order to care for people. And so we really have balanced each other really well in that. There's a bunch of other ways that we're different, of course, you know that he's our principal designer, I'm our principal strategist. Ben tends to be a lot more optimistic and I'm not going to call the opposite of that pessimistic. I like to call it realistic.

Ben Lueders:
I like to call optimistic, realistic. Okay. So I want to just change that misnomer.

Raj Lulla:
And again, there's kind of an area where it's probably true actually, that both optimism and a little bit of pessimism are both realistic because they're seeing different sides of the same thing.

Ben Lueders:
, , . Oh, totally. And I think too, one thing that I think is actually good and healthy, and it again is similar to a marriage, I think probably over the last few years, Raj has probably become a little bit more optimistic and I've maybe become a little bit more realistic at times. I know sometimes you'll be like, I know you're real sunshine and rainbow, so you got to be careful when you hear this news and I'll look at him and I'm like, no, I'm actually starting to think worst case scenario like you now, you've ruined me. No, but in a good way, I'm growing in that and I would say you too. I feel like you've come a long way and not quite as realistic, and pessimistic as maybe you were before.

Raj Lulla:
and there are ways where I have been a bit pessimistic at times where we'll suffer a setback, a contract doesn't go through the way we want it to or something, and it's easy to feel like, oh, it's over. We might as well just pack it all up and be done. And you've helped me see more abundance in the world and instead think about the opportunity that there is. Sometimes a no is a blessing, sometimes a no is a really huge thing and the longer that we've worked together the more I've seen that. And so I think we have, we've rubbed off on each other in that way, but it's been a really good thing for both of us.

Ben Lueders:
Aah, thanks Raj. , I totally agree. Totally agree.

Raj Lulla:
So as we kind of finish up here, we got those three things. We talked about a lot is like a marriage and the reason for that is that a partnership, especially a business partnership, is a long-term committed relationship. We're legally tied to each other. And that's just something you have to enter in very seriously. And I'm glad that our partnership evolved the way that it did, where we had the chance to get to know each other and work together before we even weighed into working at the same company, let alone becoming business partners. And again, those three things that we talked about are really healthy, are somebody who's always already bringing value to your company, somebody who shares your values and somebody who compliments you, compliments with an E there, who fills in your strengths and maybe has weaknesses that you don't have.
And you fill in their strengths and you have weaknesses that they don't have. Again, very similar to any other kind of long-term relationship. And then not just marriage, long term friendship as well. You don't want your best friend to be getting you in the same kind of trouble they get themselves in. But also sometimes if you're the more serious one and you need somebody to challenge you to go out and have fun, then you want that, you need those differences and those similarities. So much of it comes down to sharing those values, about that being the bedrock of that relationship, whether that be business or personal. So we always like to end with some kind of challenge. How can you take action on this. Ben, what are some things that people can do to move towards action on, if they're considering hiring somebody or working closely with somebody, what might they do with this?

Ben Lueders:
you can do this right now. Just write down your personal values, and what you hold to be near and dear, and then ask your spouse or someone you trust, how you communicate and operate, how they think you communicate and operate. Sometimes it's a little different than what we think, getting that outside perspective and ask them where you're strong and where you're weak. Get that outside perspective as well. And then see if the person that you need is already in your life or in your business, kind of like Raj was already kind of involved in my business. Or if you need to go out and find them.

Raj Lulla:
if you've done those first two things, writing down your personal values and not just values of morals and that kind of stuff, but even just how you value people operating in relationships with you. And then you ask someone you trust to talk about your strengths and weaknesses. One thing that we do really clearly here is we use the word weaknesses or things that you're bad at. Our culture a lot of times we like, oh, I need to improve with that, and we talk a lot about how we shouldn't, should ourselves to death because there's things that we're just going to be naturally good at and things that we're not naturally going to be good at.
And it's good to just admit that and then find people who can work with you to overcome those things rather than try to always be the perfect person and get better at everything. So that way when you've done those two things, you're going to have a good list of what you're looking for in a business partner or trusted relationship or trusted contractor. And again, they might be near you already or you might just have kind of an ideal sort of shopping list of the person that you're looking for. And then if you, they might work at another company right now, or you might meet them at a networking event or be introduced to them at church or the PTA, wherever.
And as they start to tick off those things then you might begin wondering like, oh, is there something more that this relationship could become? Could we become business partners and does this person show aptitude and interest and share values the same way so that we could maybe do some great work together? That's how you would go out and find a good business partner, or they may already be in your life or in your business, and you just need to value that person the way that they deserve and that relationship deserves.

Ben Lueders:
Thanks for joining us today on Growing a Fruitful Brand. If you found today's show helpful, don't forget to subscribe and consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it. If you'd like to work with Fruitful on a branding website or messaging project of your own, you can always reach out on our website fruitful.design. So until next time, don't forget to grow something good.