By Hipolito Navarrete, Managing Editor/Publisher

There are many skill sets necessary to create, develop and maintain a business and chief among them, great communication skills. Without the ability to speak clearly and to understand what is being conveyed from those that work in partnership or in any other capacity, the project will fail. It is not feasible to survive the surmountable amount of tasks that must be accomplished every day, if you are not prepared to have at times difficult and rough conversations with those that are supposed to be your companions through the endeavor.

Above all a businessperson must be ready to have challenging and tough dialogues about what is being built. In the entertainment business, many would be entrepreneur-artists are loathe to clarify their personal vision and mission in fear that they will either lose their creative drive, that someone may steal their idea or worse, they may not find anyone that believes in them.

So what seems to be the biggest problem that stops partners with being open and transparent, in fact there isn’t one big problem, there are many smaller, seemingly unimportant worries. A big herring, is the cultural and personal stigmas we feel toward being vulnerable. We have been taught that if we reveal our hand, some one else will take advantage of it. Here is a simple consideration; if you really feel that the person you are doing business with is someone you cannot trust, you need to stop right now and find another partner or business. Eventually, even if she is the most noble and honest person in the world, she will realize what you feel and then you will be the one she cannot trust. Lack if trust will create a culture of systematized secrecy, this will destroy your work together.

At the beginning of a working business relationship, you must be open and transparent so that you can understand if this partnership can work. You must be very clear on what you want to accomplish so that you can both understand why you may have an uncomfortable feeling that what is happening fits your goals and so that you can also be clear to your partners if they question your actions as they pertain to the business.