Partner at your own peril

Lesson 2 - Don't go into partnership

From my own experience and from all the stories that I have heard, the positives unfortunately do not outweigh the negative experiences shared when it comes to forming partnerships in business.

My entrepreneurial path started off with a business partner, and yes there definitely are benefits to a partnership - sharing costs, someone to soundboard with and having someone to share the ups and downs with when you have decided to embark on a path of building your own business. However invariably, there is always going to be one party that feels that they are contributing more, be it financially, workload, time, resources, ideas, bringing in business etc.; at some point or another one of the parties is going start feeling that the other person is not sufficiently pulling their weight and the resentment starts.

If however you do decide that going the partnership-route is the way for you, my advice is that you have a very clear contract in place from the outset outlining the partner responsibilities in as much detail as possible. It is also important to determine up front what does happen the day when things don't work out - i.e. how will things be wrapped up, what happens to the assets, the employees, the finances, the sharing of profit, sharing of debt, clients, restraint of trade. Don't make the mistake I made of thinking "we'll be different and make it work | we have such a good understanding | we trust each other | we'll prove the world wrong..." - you won't.