Business Partners
 

It's my belief that business partnerships almost always fail in one way or another...


Do you have any success or horror stories from a partnership?


If you think it's a success, you probably just need to give it a little more time to mature into a horror story -- how long have you been going at it?

I got a good one. But its a long story and cant go into details but I used to be the majority owner of Matrix Content.

Ben and Jerry I think must be a main one.

Marks and Spensors (UK).
M and Ms (to begin with) (now split Mars and Murry Mints).

'life partners' don't count.

I think partnerships work... 10% of the time.

They can be great or they can be a complete nightmare. Its a lot like marriage. Women and men change in a relationship as time goes on, same thing with your business partners.

Sometimes you start off scraping together, find success then all of a sudden one guy can get cocky on you, or decide he's made enough money and doesn't want to work hard anymore.

Also alleged cheating is quite common between partners. The TCG accusations by Joe are a perfect example of that.

Its impossible to tell up front who will be a good or bad partner. Someone who you think you're taking a chance on could turn into a great life long partner and someone you think is great up front could end up screwing you over or arguing constantly.

However there is tremendous benefit to having partners. You gain additional networking, capital resources, and deal ops. You have someone you can trust to run things when you take time off or are traveling, or sick. Its fun to have some commaradery.

I try to have at least 1 or 2 partners in every deal I do. I've only had a couple really bad ones. Most have worked out very well.

Ive been in business 30 years and have had several partnerships on route most of them for one reason or another never worked out since I am a complusive workoholic and expect partners to work as hard.

I concur with KRL business partnerships are no different than marrige and there are times you need the extra input from other like minded minds, also allowing yourself time off to re-charge without the worry the business will fail because your not there.

My older brother found a guy 15 years ago to run the bulk of his company, that guy uis now CEO of a £40 million empire and nt brother is semi retired enjoying several holidays and golf trips a year, ir was only recently that my brother sold the CEO 10% of the holding company, I think my brother was lucky in finding a guy like that.


RACEMAN :thumbsup

I have different expectations for each company I have or have owned. I went through 2 different partners with my first company. The first partner was too scared to do the adult stuff, so we went our seperate ways and I kept a majority of the company. With my second partner, I felt I was doing most of the work while he sat back and took the money. He also started using company money for trips and other personal stuff with out my knowledge. I put in all the startup money and did the 14 to 18 hour days. Learned everything that I needed to learn and then he would expect me to teach him. I was busy enough with taking care of the company, without having to hold his hand.

I have two other businesses with partners, where I totally trust them. With the recording studio, I have no worries and we work well togather (even though were are very opposite). The other business with a partner (it was her company to begin with), I haven't had a problem with either. I do my share and she does hers.

Timing is also important with partnerships. Everybody is at different points in their career and what they desire from a partnership may differ, also circumstances before the partnership can put people in different positions. The ideal situation is experienced people in the same general situation - that creates get synergies...