|
glort Offline [X]
|
These things have a tendency to start out with good intentions and go south after that. Been there with first hand experience and seen what happened to others too.
To make it work, the first thing that needs to be done is forget about friendships and put EVERYTHING on paper. Starting with how the business will end.
What happens if someone wants out? What it the division of assets or payout of time?
How does it work as far as payment of time for non tangibles such as marketing and promo even if it is putting stuff on FB?
Each persons responsibilities and commitment needs to be WRITTEN DOWN and signed off before anything is done. It's not possible to share the workload. that's a fallacy. Even if the hours put in are the same, one person is bound to come to feel their efforts are more important, more difficult, valuable that the others. This needs to be nutted out at the start. What if one person can't fulfill their obligation? Sickess, family commitments etc. What is the policy there?
What about decision making? If one wants one thing and the other wants something else, who has the final say?
A mate and I had a business partnership which went well and we are still great mates. He was smart enough to bring all this up at the beginning and we thrashed it out with the help of an accountant/ business mentor. He was appointed " Referee" if you like. If opposing POV was arrived at, he would be the one to make the call. Surprisingly, that never happened. Came up a few times but when the other person explained their POV, it made more sense than our own so we went with it. Either that or 95% of the time we were in agreeance and there was a very clear direction.
As far as effort invested, we just sorted it monetarily. One of the resons for going into it was because our skills were different which gave us a wider field of experience and out efforts would never be the same. We just put down our hours and paid ourselves. The hours cancelled each other out and the imbalance was paid for in addition to out base pay. We figured our efforts were worth the same, all we had to do was get paid for the hours invested.
I think one thing that did work well for us is that we had a lot of respect and never having had an argument before, during or since despite a 24 year friendship.
One would put in a bit more and it was not a problem because we knew that sooner or later that would be compensated. If one did have to do a lot more than the other, then that was simply paid out. Probably didn't hurt that we were making good money pretty quick into the arrangement so hardly any point in nit picking when we both thought we were getting the better end of the arrangement and grateful to the other.
I think you should also clarify exactly what benefits each party will bring to the table and what they are worth. Again if one feel they are worth more than the other or putting in more, that needs to be sorted before a thing is done.
You also need a direction and a goal. Know what each otehr wants and rough out a plan of how you are going to get it.
The worst mistake you can think is all this planning and writing things down is over the top or not needed. If anyone even passes that thought through their minds, it's proof positive you DO need to do it. That and the fact every partnership does and its essential. You wouldn't build a house without having a plan or knowing how many bedrooms, levels etc so don't try and start a business / relationship without one.
The more you sort out now, the less problems and the more smoothly things will run later.
|
Dec 10, 2016 at 08:58 PM |
| |
|
|