Our book decodes what we believe is the central factor in building long-lasting businesses of significant scale—the personality of the builder. But every successful builder needs a crew—in fact, many crews, each with its own role, resources, and requirements. In building a physical structure, one crew might dig the foundation while others focus on framing, wiring, or plumbing. Still others assemble the financing package. Building a large-scale business structure is not fundamentally different. No business builder creates a successful, durable, and valuable enterprise alone. After all, there is no such word as “solopreneur.”

“Entre” is the mantra here: entrepreneurship requires collaborative connections between people and resources. In part 2 of this book, we offer practical advice to each Builder Personality on how you can best select and work more effectively with the three groups of people who have the greatest multiplier effect for your business—your cobuilder if you choose to have one (or more), your key employees, and your primary investors or executive backers.

This is all about builder–crew fit—improving your odds of best complementing and reinforcing your Builder Personality for the ultimate benefit of the company’s success to which both you and your crew aspire. Builders who confuse loyalty with competency, or crew members who default to sycophancy rather than genuine collaboration, both destroy value.

The next three chapters offer a pragmatic guide to how these collaborations can work well. We start in chapter 6 with your most personal choice, whether and how to pick a cobuilder to share the building challenge with you. In chapter 7, we pull back our lens a bit more, to include the other key members of your building crew. Finally, in chapter 8, we suggest how you can match your agenda and building style with that of the primary outside financial or inside executive sponsors you need, whether in a startup or corporate venture. Part 2 is comprised of the following 3 chapters: