By Emily Meyer.

I was honored to speak at this year’s Alt Summit, and am excited to tell you about how I found the right business partner—and, by extension, how you can do the same.

Twelve years ago, I was designing the “little girls” collection at Esprit. I had an brewing idea for a brand inspired by the discovery of global cultures. It was a beautiful concoction of my life experiences up to that point in time.

I met Leigh Rawdon at a party – our husbands were friends from business school – and we began chatting about work and life. She was passionate about starting her own business someday. Then eventually I told her my idea for a brand. Her eyes lit up and she said, “Tell me more.” Leigh believed in my idea—and I soon learned that she had the skills and experience to turn my concept into an actual business.

It might seem that Leigh and I were just plain lucky to meet and then to co-found Tea Collection. But there was more than luck, it was fate. Here’s what I’ve learned about finding the right business partner:

By Chris Gardner. Photo by Susie Blackmon.

There is a magical formula to growing your blog’s readership, and you’ve heard it a thousand times–publish consistent, high-quality, original content, and use it to interact with your audience and other sites. That’s it, and it comes as a surprise to no one.

And, in some ways, it’s not all that easy to execute. With this in mind, here’s an editorial exercise to help you plan and produce high quality pieces of original content every week for the rest of the year. You can mix these in with the rest of your posts to remind your readers that there’s a real person behind the site they’re reading.

Step One: Go to a fresh page in your notebook, or open up a new spreadsheet on your computer.

By Chris Gardner. Photo by Liz West.

I’m a firm believer in being as transparent as possible to your readers. Let your audience know that you’re not some magical, creative, and beautiful mist floating around the internet in perfectly lit spaces wearing amazing clothes. You are a real person who blogs at night, and on weekends, and in your pajamas. Let your readers know that just to the left of that photo frame is the pile of junk you scootched over to find some blank wall space, as well as a bunch of tape and string and other tricks. Doing so makes you a real person, and people want to follow real people, not anonymous tastemakers.